Indie Game Gems

A small, curated site for discovering great indie games outside the big-store algorithm: one hand-picked Game of the Day, a Weekly Release Radar, Top of the Month, per-game and per-developer pages with one-click store buttons (Steam, GOG, Epic, itch.io, Humble, direct), and a weekly email newsletter.

Server-rendered with Go (chi, templ), PostgreSQL via sqlc, Tailwind CSS v4, and a little htmx. Content is curated with the gems CLI (cobra) and enriched from the public Steam store API and IGDB.

Features

• Game of the Day — an editorially picked game per date, with a note (/game-of-the-day, archives by date).
• Weekly Release Radar — games released in a given ISO week (/release-radar, /release-radar/{week}).
• Top of the Month — best games of a month by gem score (/top, /top/{year}/{month}).
• Game & developer pages — descriptions, screenshots/trailer, tags, store buttons, "more from this developer" (/games/{slug}, /developers/{slug}).
• Newsletter — double opt-in signup, markdown-authored weekly issues with {{gotd}}/{{radar}}/{{top}}/{{game}} data directives, resumable sending, web archive, one-click unsubscribe.
• Sitemap, robots.txt, RSS feed (/sitemap.xml, /robots.txt, /feed.xml).
• Curation CLI — gems (see below) imports, syncs and schedules everything; safe to re-run.

Quick start

Prerequisites: Go 1.25+, Docker, and (for templ/sqlc/migrations work) templ, sqlc, golang-migrate, air and the Tailwind standalone CLI.

cp .env.example .env            # defaults work for local dev
docker compose up -d            # Postgres 16, Adminer (:8080), Mailpit (:8025)
go run ./cmd/gems seed seed/games.yaml   # import the curated seed (idempotent)
go run ./cmd/gems steam sync --all       # descriptions + review stats from Steam
go run ./cmd/gems media fetch --all      # cache images into ./media
go run ./cmd/gems pick auto --days 14    # schedule the next two weeks of picks
air                              # dev server on :3000 (see .air.toml)

Migrations run automatically on server/CLI start (db.Init() applies db/migrations). Tests: go test ./... (hermetic — no DB needed).

Curation workflow (gems CLI)

go run ./cmd/gems steam releases --from 2026-09-28 --to 2026-10-04
                                        # every indie Steam game released in the range
                                        # -> tmp/steam-releases-<from>_<to>.json (no DB needed)
go run ./cmd/gems games add --steam 1145360 --slug hades --editorial 95
                                        # create a game from Steam data
go run ./cmd/gems steam sync --all      # Steam: description, reviews, release
go run ./cmd/gems igdb sync --all       # IGDB: trailer, store links, companies
go run ./cmd/gems igdb catalogue supergiant-games   # add a developer's other games
go run ./cmd/gems media fetch --all [--force]       # cache images locally
go run ./cmd/gems link set hades gog https://www.gog.com/game/hades
go run ./cmd/gems pick set 2026-10-01 hades --note "Why we love it"
go run ./cmd/gems pick auto --days 7    # fill empty days, avoiding recent repeats
go run ./cmd/gems pick list [--from YYYY-MM-DD --to YYYY-MM-DD]
go run ./cmd/gems games list            # inventory
go run ./cmd/gems rescore               # recompute all gem scores
go run ./cmd/gems refresh               # cron bundle: steam + igdb + missing media

seed/games.yaml is the curated source of truth (developers, games, tags, store links, editorial scores). Re-run gems seed seed/games.yaml any time — seed owns the curated fields and never wipes importer-owned data.

gems steam releases is the discovery step: it walks Steam's store search (released games newest-first, plus the coming-soon listing for future dates), keeps games with an exact release date inside --from..--to (default --to: today, UTC) and English support, then adds store details, the top user tags and the store page's review score from Steam's batched GetItems API (100 games per request, about 10 seconds for a week of indie releases). --indie=false drops the Indie-tag filter, --details=false writes only appid/name/date, --out - prints to stdout. Pick candidates from the JSON and import them with gems games add --steam <appid>.

IGDB access: gems igdb * needs IGDB_CLIENT_ID / IGDB_CLIENT_SECRET from a Confidential Twitch dev console app (IGDB is free for non-commercial use). Without them everything else works; igdb commands fail with a clear message.

Cron: run gems refresh periodically (plus gems newsletter send on publish day). In Docker: docker compose run --rm app /gems refresh.

Newsletter workflow

go run ./cmd/gems newsletter new --week 2026-W40          # scaffold from template
$EDITOR newsletter/issues/2026-w40.md                      # edit markdown
go run ./cmd/gems newsletter preview newsletter/issues/2026-w40.md [--text]
go run ./cmd/gems newsletter test newsletter/issues/2026-w40.md --to you@example.com
go run ./cmd/gems newsletter send newsletter/issues/2026-w40.md --yes
go run ./cmd/gems newsletter subscribers list|count
go run ./cmd/gems newsletter issues

An issue is markdown with YAML front matter (subject, preheader), prose, and block directives on their own lines:

Directive	Meaning
{{gotd 2026-09-28}}	Game of the Day for that date (default: today)
{{radar 2026-W40}}	releases of the given ISO week
{{top 2026-09}}	best games of the given month
{{game hades}}	a single game card with store buttons

Rendering resolves directives against the DB, produces a table-based HTML email plus a plain-text alternative, and snapshots the issue into the web archive. Sending is resumable — re-running send only mails pending deliveries — and delivery rows are claimed atomically (claimed with FOR UPDATE SKIP LOCKED), so concurrent send runs never double-send; a run that crashes mid-mail is resumed by the next run after a 10-minute claim timeout. The snapshot freezes once the first delivery row exists. Local dev sends through Mailpit (UI at :8025).

Gem score

gem_score blends editorial curation with Steam review sentiment into a 0–100 number (see catalog/scoring.go). Steam's review percentage only counts once a game has at least 50 reviews; its influence then ramps linearly up to full weight at 10,000 reviews. The blend is 60% editorial / 40% Steam; with no usable Steam data the editorial score stands alone, and with no editorial score the Steam percentage stands alone (a game with neither stays unscored). Scores are recomputed by gems seed, gems steam sync and gems rescore.

Environment variables

All in .env.example; copy to .env.

Variable	Meaning
DATABASE_URL	Postgres connection string (app + CLI)
PORT	HTTP port (default 3000)
APP_ENV	development (text logs) or production (JSON logs, HSTS)
MEDIA_DIR	Local media cache root, default media (gitignored)
MEDIA_BASE_URL	Public prefix for media URLs, default /media; point at a CDN to switch
POSTGRES_PORT	Host port for the compose db service (default 5432)
POSTGRES_PASSWORD	Compose db + prod-app database password (only needed on first db init / by the app container)
BASE_URL	Public site origin; links/emails are absolute against it
SMTP_HOST/PORT/USERNAME/PASSWORD/TLS	SMTP relay for newsletter mail; defaults target the Mailpit dev sink (SMTP_TLS: none/starttls/tls)
SMTP_RATE_PER_SEC	Max mails per second when sending
MAIL_FROM, MAIL_REPLY_TO, MAIL_POSTAL_ADDRESS	Sender identity + imprint footer
NEWSLETTER_SECRET	HMAC key for one-click unsubscribe links — rotate = links invalidated (confirm links use random tokens stored hashed)
IGDB_CLIENT_ID, IGDB_CLIENT_SECRET	Optional; Twitch app credentials for IGDB

Deployment

docker compose --profile prod up -d app builds and runs the production image: a two-stage build that compiles the web server and the gems CLI, regenerates CSS with the pinned Tailwind CLI, and runs as non-root. The app service gets its database URL from POSTGRES_PASSWORD against the db service; MEDIA_DIR is a writable volume (media_data:/data/media) — never baked into the image. Cron/one-off jobs use the same image:

docker compose run --rm app /gems refresh
docker compose run --rm app /gems pick auto --days 14

Data sources & attribution

Game metadata, descriptions, review statistics and imagery come from the public Steam store (Valve) and IGDB (Twitch; free for non-commercial use under their terms). Images are cached locally and served from this site's own /media origin. All games link back to their store pages; trademarks belong to their respective owners.