Getting Started with Art Explorer

Art Explorer is a search engine for the look of games. Describe a style, drop in a reference image, or pick a colour palette, and it finds matching screenshots from games on Steam, best match first. Use it to research the visual language of a genre, gather references for your art team, or check how crowded a look already is before you commit to it.

Art Explorer is part of a Game Oracle subscription. For a quick tour, see the Art Explorer overview.

Searching by Description

Type what you want to see into the search box and press Search. Short, visual descriptions work best: the style (pixel art, hand-painted, low-poly), the setting (a misty forest, a neon city street), and the mood or colours (cozy, bleak, pastel). For example:

  • moody pixel-art forest at night
  • cozy farming village in autumn
  • minimalist sci-fi UI

Only the first few dozen words are read, so lead with the details that matter most. It matches what screenshots look like, not game descriptions or tags, so “roguelike” will do less than “dungeon with torch-lit stone corridors”.

Each search returns up to 1,000 screenshots. They load as you scroll, so keep going: the order is by visual similarity, and interesting finds often sit further down.

Reference Images

Click Add reference image (or drag files onto the button) to search with your own images: concept art, a mood board, or a screenshot you like. Art Explorer finds screenshots that look similar. You can add up to five images of up to 10 MB each; with several, it looks for screenshots that sit between them.

You can combine reference images with a description. Art Explorer runs both searches and merges the results, so screenshots that match both rise to the top.

Palette Filter

A palette filter leans your results towards screenshots that use a set of colours. Click Add a palette filter and choose your current palette or one you’ve saved. Up to the first 16 colours of a palette are used.

The palette gives your results a gentle nudge: your description or reference images stay in charge, and screenshots that also use your colours move up. The nudge is deliberately subtle, because pushing harder brings back screenshots of plain colour blocks rather than games that use those colours.

You can also search with a palette alone: leave the description empty, add no reference images, and press Search.

The palette filter compares the overall impression of the colours rather than checking every pixel, so treat it as a steer, not an exact match. It pulls a little harder on descriptions than on reference images.

Advanced Filters

Open Advanced filters, below the search controls, to only see screenshots from games that match. The filters use the same game data as Data Explorer:

  • Tags: choose Include and pick tags games must have (all of them), or Exclude and pick tags they must not have. Included tags show in green, excluded ones in red; click a tag to remove it.
  • Release status: Released, Unreleased or Both.
  • AI disclosure: games that disclose using generative AI on their Steam page. Include shows every game, Exclude leaves those games out, and Only shows just those games.
  • Reviews: a minimum percentage of positive reviews and a minimum SteamDB score (both 0 to 100).
  • Market scores: a minimum Uniqueness score (0 to 10), and a peer rank to beat. Lower peer ranks are better, so 10 keeps games in the top 10 of their 100 closest competitors.
  • Performance: an estimated Steam sales range for released games, or, with release status set to Unreleased, an estimated wishlists range.

Click Apply filters at the bottom of the panel to search with your current description, reference images and palette filter. Search also applies your filters. The closed panel shows how many are selected. Clear filters resets them all; click Apply filters to refresh the results. You need a description, reference image or palette filter to search. Filtered searches look further down the list of matches, then keep only screenshots from matching games, so strict filters can still return few or no results. If that happens, loosen a filter or broaden your description.

Building Palettes

The palette editor sits at the bottom of Art Explorer (collapse it with the arrow if you need the room) and at the bottom of the image viewer. Both edit the same palette, so colours you pick in one appear in the other.

  • Add a colour: click the rainbow Add new swatch, then pick a colour, type a hex code, or use the image eyedropper below.
  • Pick from an image: choose Pick from an image, then click any screenshot in your results or in the image viewer. A loupe shows the colour under your pointer. Shift-click to pick several colours in a row, and press Escape to stop.
  • Extract palette from this image: in the image viewer, pulls the main colours out of the current screenshot in one go.
  • Edit or reorder: click a swatch to change its colour, move it left or right, or remove it.
  • Rename: click the palette’s name to rename it.

Saving, Loading and Importing Palettes

Click Save palette to keep a palette in your active project; after that, Save updates it. Duplicate saves a separate copy of your current colours and selects it for editing, leaving the original unchanged. Copies are numbered, such as Village dusk - Copy 1, Village dusk - Copy 2, using the next number above existing copies in the active project. You can duplicate unsaved or imported palettes too. The button stays visible, and is disabled only while saving or when the palette is empty. Saving and duplicating require a subscription and a project. Click + New Palette, the first toolbar action, to start an empty palette. Click Load to open a saved palette or delete one you no longer need. Unsaved changes are kept in your browser, so a refresh won’t lose them, but only saved palettes are available on your other devices.

Click Import to bring in a palette from elsewhere. It replaces the colours in your editor; save it to keep it.

  • Lospec: paste a palette’s link from lospec.com/palette-list, for example lospec.com/palette-list/sweetie-16, or just its name.
  • Files: choose or drop a palette file. Art Explorer reads hex lists (.hex), GIMP palettes (.gpl), JASC and Microsoft palettes (.pal), Adobe Swatch Exchange (.ase), Photoshop swatches (.aco), Paint.NET palettes (.txt) and palette images such as Lospec’s .png exports. Any other image gives you its main colours.

Palettes can hold up to 256 colours.

The Image Viewer

Click any screenshot to open it full screen. The same viewer opens wherever you see game screenshots in Game Oracle, including game pages, feature reports, Game Gap segments and Concept Compass. Anyone can browse screenshots in the viewer; pinning notes and the palette editor are part of Art Explorer, so they need a subscription.

  • Game title and More Details: the top bar names the game and links to its page (the link is hidden when you’re already on that page).
  • Browse: use the arrows either side of the image, your keyboard’s left and right arrow keys, or swipe on a touch screen. You move through the screenshots from wherever you opened the viewer.
  • Close: the close button in the top right, or press Escape.

Notes on Screenshots

Click anywhere on a screenshot in the image viewer to pin a note there: what you like about the lighting, a UI idea to borrow, a question for your artist. Write it and click Save (or press Ctrl or ⌘ and Enter).

  • Collapse and expand: click a note’s numbered pin to fold it away or open it again, or use Collapse all and Expand all.
  • Edit or delete: use the pencil and bin buttons on an open note.
  • Move: drag a pin, or focus it with Tab and use the arrow keys (hold Shift for bigger steps).
  • Hide notes: Hide notes clears the image so you can see it unobstructed.
  • Add note places a new note in the middle of the image, if you’d rather not click.

Notes are saved in your active project, and pinning the first one also clips the screenshot to the project’s Scrapbook. They follow the screenshot: pin one in Art Explorer and you’ll see it when you open the same screenshot on the game’s page, and the other way round. Only people on the project can see them, so they stay private unless you share the project with your Business team. You can pin up to 50 notes on each image.

Saving to Your Scrapbook

Everything you collect in Art Explorer can go straight into your active Scrapbook project:

  • Screenshots: click the book icon in the image viewer’s top bar to clip the screenshot to Images, along with any notes you’ve pinned on it.
  • Palettes: saved palettes appear in Palettes.

From the Scrapbook, drag either into a Workspace document or whiteboard. Palettes become swatch cards (click a colour to copy its hex code), and images keep their numbered note pins.

Mature Content

Screenshots from games flagged as adult are blurred unless you’ve chosen to show NSFW content in your account settings. Click a blurred screenshot to reveal it.