Happy belated Easter or International ASMR Day gamers, religious people, and food connoisseurs. While some celebrate a religious holiday, others just enjoy having a good meal. Outside of eating and religious practices, many spend the day with family playing games, watching movies, catching up, or finding some other way to pass the time, for better or worse.

Sometimes you might not agree with family or just hate being around them. So if you don’t like asking your family for advice, especially about gaming, where do you turn? More than likely, you turn to friends. Well, now a free service looks to give you gaming recommendations based on your play style rather than the games you play. Let us introduce you to CritRate.

CritRate is marketed as the first-ever video game recommendation platform that offers calibrated scores based on your gaming personality traits. CritRate sorts gamers into one of five houses based on their play style.

The five houses are VANTAGIST, CURIONAUT, ASCENDIARY, GALABANDER, and BRAVADIER. Before being sorted into a house, new users are tasked with completing a survey to gauge seven factors. The 7 key factors CritRate looks at are Competitiveness, Players in Session, Challenge, Creativity, Strategy, Immersion, and Pace.

Key Factor Breakdown

These Key Factor breakdowns come directly from the CritRate site. Where do you think you would fall within these categories? If you are curious, try taking the test:

• Competitive – This criterion reflects the level of importance that winning is to our enjoyment. Those who simply love the experience of playing are For Fun and those who seek the thrill of winning are For Glory.
• Players – This criterion demonstrates our preferences for playing with others. Those who enjoy taking in all a game has to offer by themselves are Solo and those who love the experience of interacting with others are Multiplayer.
• Challenge – This criterion underpins our desire for difficulty, or lack thereof. Those who play for the experience, not the frustration, are on the Easy spectrum and those who always take the road least traveled will be on the Hard side.
• Creativity – This criterion illustrates how we progress. Those who forge ahead with purpose and direction are Practical while those who wander and find their own objective are Experimental.
• Strategy – This criterion determines how we approach a situation. Those who carefully gauge the situation before acting are more Planning oriented while those who react and adjust on the fly are more Spontaneous.
• Immersion – This criterion depicts what aspects of a game we are absorbed by most. Those who sink into the feel and flow of the gameplay are Mechanic–focused and those who are swept away by the world and its characters are Story–focused.
• Pace – This criterion shows how we prefer engaging with our games. Those who savor the moment and take their time are on the Slow side and those who want to progress and make decisions are Fast.

Thoughts on the Platform

Before I even took the survey I knew I was going to fall under the BRAVADIER house. The house description is as follows:

To the Bravadier, challenging others is typically top of mind, especially if there’s a match to be won. Their cunning, competitive spirit is accentuated by their prowess for on–the–fly creative problem–solving.

High scores in For Glory and Fast–Paced gameplay.

Without answering a single question, it was known, but I took the time to take the test and see how they break down each category. The test takes the time to understand the player and uses how they play in previous games to give recommendations. Rather than suggesting a game based on genre, it bases it on your playstyle. So even if you like action games, it focuses more on if you are rushing through the story to play another game or taking the time to explore everything within the game.

The test itself is based on honest answers, so gamers can alter the results but it is rather silly. The test focuses on self-reflection, play style, and gaming interest. At PAX, players were asked to rate which upcoming games they were excited about. Once they had taken the test, attendees could see PAX East games similar to their playstyle; this gave attendees suggestions of demos to check out on the show floor. Based on user responsiveness, it seemed that attendees agreed with the recommendations.

If you are looking for a recommendation platform based on your play style that will give you games you will enjoy, then we recommend checking out CritRate.IO. If you don’t like it, then you can just stop using it. Personally, it has helped us find a few games to play in our spare time.