What we need is a metaroguelike game that hinges progression on getting decently difficult achievements selected from a list of backlog games. There would be branching paths and boss challenges too. Maybe you could challenge other people to the same backlog run too.

I stopped buying games. Really stopped playing too except to unwind with Battlefield 4 or crack some beers and go space trucking in Star Citizen. Maybe I’m just getting old, but very few new games interest me.

I don’t have a backlog. I have four categories:

• games I’ve finished

• games I’m still playing

• games I haven’t played yet

• games I want to buy

And I also have a rule not to buy a game just because it’s on sale. Unless I have time to play it, it can wait.

I’m always reshuffling my backlog while still piling on new games. I never seem to have enough gaming time, and I keep chasing whatever I think might be the best one to play. I dip into loads of them for a quick try, then jump to something else to see if it’s better. The result is that I barely ever finish anything.

I don’t put that much thought into it. I’ll buy a game if I like it or if I think it’s a good deal. At no point am I obligated to play it. I bought (a license to) it, it does not own me, let alone oblige shit outta me.

Case in point, I bought three games on sale on Xbox a while ago. Bloodstained, Stray, and Animal Well. Bloodstained I’ve played and beat a bunch of times, but I own it on Steam and it’s never been ported to Mac, and I don’t have Windows machines anymore. So, I bought it on Xbox. Haven’t played it yet since I bought it. I’ve 100%'d it on GamePass when I had that, so I’ll go back and do so again. Stray, similar. Bought it on Steam, that is available for Mac and that’s partly why I bought it. But it doesn’t play very well on Mac (or at least mine) so I haven’t played it much. Rather play it on the Xbox. I’ve beaten it once, I’ll get around to doing it on Xbox. Played it before on PC (but I knew I was switching). Animal Well… I like the idea. The game isn’t really my thing. I may give it another shot at some point, but I don’t really care for it.

My backlog grew too much and one day I decided to go through and just write off games I thought I would fealistically never play. That pruned a good ~half of them. The remaining I put through a ranking process and I pick a game and play it until I either finish it or stop having fun (within reason - I’ll try to push through a bit of “boring time”). Not buying any more games until I’ve got the backlog down to single digits. The only exceptions are, well, exceptional cases. Deltarune ch3+4 for example.

You don’t need to buy the game now just because it’s 95% off. It’ll be that price again. You have other games to play. And you’ll feel better for finally playing them.

We just hit 1600 games on our Steam Family. Most of those are from one guy who just does not seem capable of finishing games. Like he enjoys them but just goes “ooh shiny” and picks up the next one.

I very much have a list that I’m working through in order. I’ll rearrange the order a little bit as people push me to play certain things and if I’m just not enjoying a game I’ll put it down and move on but for the most part I’m just rolling through. These days I’m sticking to games with a certain feeling I just connect with, not trying to play literally everything, just the ones I want.

I’ve accepted that I’ll never finish everything in my list and honestly I’m fine with that. I’m just going to enjoy my time with whatever game I’m on.

I play on a steam deck and I decided to work through games smallest first. I don’t necessarily complete them I decide if I want to keep them on and if I don’t feel they are fun they are kicked and as I have space I go up the line. This will likely go out the window if some large game I like enough comes out. Something along the lines of cyberpunk, eleden ring, harry potter, etc.

Using Playnite has been useful for me. Consolidating different libraries, then sorting by Critic Score or Community Score has helped me find the worthwhile games I’ve overlooked.

See, my issue is that I don’t get to pick what I’m going to play. Oh, I can present my brain with many options I want to play, but I’m at the whim of what my brain fixates on. There’s so many games on that list of things I want to play that I don’t even really think if it as a backlog anymore and I’ve just accepted that I’m probably not going to get to all of them.

I don’t really buy that many new games; usually if I buy something I intend to play it right away. I used to frequently support HumbleBundle back in its glory days though, and I support the Yogscast JingleJam every year, which has left me with a massive library of games that I didn’t really intend to purchase nor play. I typically just ignore them, but sometimes one catches my eye and I’ll give it a go if I’m very bored.