Welcome to Nocturne: Your Games Site, Your Way
Nocturne is a dark, magazine-style theme for sites that cover games and gamers: a big hero slider, colourful category pills, card grids and a sidebar that follows readers through the whole site. Everything below is switched on from the settings screen, with no code. You’re looking at the demo, so here’s what you can do with it.
A front page that grabs attention
A hero slider leads the page, with a blurred, darkened backdrop behind each full, uncropped picture. Below it come Featured Games, Latest Games, Latest News and Most Exciting Games. Hand-pick the slides and the featured games, or let the theme choose at random. Reorder the sections, hide the ones you don’t need, and drop ad slots in between.
Dark, with your accent
Nocturne is dark by design, with a teal accent used for section banners, buttons, links and highlights. Change the colour in one field and the whole site follows. Every genre, category and platform also gets its own pill colour automatically, so cards never look alike.
Game pages with everything on them
Game pages pull in cover art, screenshots, trailers, platforms, developer, publisher, release date, age rating and official links straight from the Game Data Importer. Uploaded video trailers play next to YouTube ones. Switch each element on or off, and drag the sections into the order you want.
Reviews and ratings
Add a Review Breakdown and an “Our Review” box appears on the game page, with a score for each criterion. Readers rate games with stars, the IGDB rating sits as a badge on the cover, and rating badges can also show on the cards across the site.
Where to buy
Buy buttons for Steam, GOG and Epic come with the game data, and a Custom Buy Link covers itch.io, the developer’s own shop or Patreon. A “compare prices” row links to Kinguin, Green Man Gaming, Fanatical and Eneba, and you can add your own affiliate tracking to each link.
Cards or lists, the reader chooses
Archives, genres, platforms and search results open as a thumbnail grid. A switch above the list flips them to a compact, title-only view for quick scanning, and the theme remembers the choice. You can also restrict the site to one view.
A sidebar that’s always there
The same sidebar follows readers on every page: Genres, Latest Games, Follow Us and Most Viewed, plus optional Newsletter and Statistics boxes. Reorder or hide sections, and put the sidebar on the left or the right.
Readers get their own space
Visitors can log in, favourite games, and mark them Want to Play, Playing or Completed. Their account page collects Recently Viewed games, their lists, their ratings and their newsletter status. Login, registration and password pages are built in and match the site, and a Submit Game page lets readers suggest titles.
Build an audience
A newsletter box collects subscribers with a confirmation email. You can export the list, then write and send a newsletter from the dashboard with a preview and a test send. Add social links in the header, footer and sidebar, and an optional floating button for a shop or sign-up page.
Make it earn
Five ad slots are ready to go: three in the sidebar and two on the homepage. Paste in an ad network’s code or upload a banner with a link. An empty slot shows nothing, ads can be hidden from logged-in members, and the slots can be moved around like any other section.
Ready to begin? Open GameSync Nocturne in your WordPress admin, replace this post with your own, and publish your first story.
