I kinda hate the concept of a backlog for myself, but that’s entirely because it just puts stress on me and makes me feel bad with getting nothing out of that. That said, I got a bunch of games recently that I’m actively interested in playing, though I’m at this time forcing myself to either finish a game, or call it quits before I start a new one.
Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader, already started this, enjoying it but these games do get beefy.
Torment: Tides of Numenera, exhausting to play, deeply interesting and I hope to slowly chip away at this.
Lost Records: Bloom & Rage, also already started, enjoying it just something you got to properly sit down for.
Tactical Breach Wizards, XCOM with wizards.
Expeditions: Rome, done the intro so far, enjoying it but three of these CRPGs at once get a bit much.
Little Rocket Lab, played for an hour or so now but I need to get in the mood to just beeline this at some point so I stop struggling with the controls.
Signalis, unfortunately I bought this on the Switch and I just struggle to use that thing.
There’s some other things I might weave in there as well, but those are the main ones for me.
I make a list like this at the start of each year. I don’t use it as a checklist so much as I reference it whenever I am feeling indecisive on what to play. I usually get about 12-15 crossed off by the end of the year.
That’s totally understandable, I keep a playlist otherwise I have a whole bunch of games that I like the idea of playing but never do. I just need to start them or drop them because staring at untouched games kinda gives me some guilt over spending money. Your list looks absolutely solid though, some awesome games on there!
I usually try to map this out too - things from the backlog that I want to prioritize over a year. That’s a lot of sequels for me right now, but it includes:
I’m a really bad “backlog” person. I get excited about new game releases and I love supporting cool projects, and those feelings unfortunately far outweigh my time/energy to actually play them. The result is commonly buying anywhere from 3-5 games a week, playing 0-1 of them, and repeating this forever. My true lifetime backlog has gotta be in the hundreds at this point.
Anyway, all that to say the backlog gets bigger all the time, and I have a hard time going back to things, haha. Off the top of my head, my “2025 Games I Wish I Would’ve Gotten Around To” list includes…
CloverPit
Wall World 2
Escape from Duckov
There Are No Orcs
Go back and see if I can complete The Manbreaker in Baby Steps
Finish Silksong (only in Act 2)
Would like to say that I will do this, but, you know…
I typically waffle around bored and I really should play them. Will I? Probably not some of these. They’re pretty long and I’m not always gonna be in the mood but I’ll try it. I’m still always gonna support projects I really like even if I can’t play them!
I’m right here too - it’s rare for a game over 20 hours to be something that really hooks me the entire time (when that does happen it’s pretty great, even if it feels a bit indulgent). A few years ago I both resolved to finish more games and to make my peace with stepping away. This year I got through a few games I had started in previous years.
I’m gonna try to bring my Steam Deck around more to knock out some games in my backlog. Some of these are games I just bought on sale to check out and then never got around to, so I’m not even sure if they’re ones I’d enjoy, but I have to check, so…
Kirby Air Riders: Started in 2025. I’ll consider it complete when I finish a Road Trip run and unlock all riders and machines.
Unbeatable: Started in 2025. Just gotta finish the story for this one and I’ll be satisfied, though the arcade mode gameplay is so fun that I’m probably gonna return to it anyway.
Deltarune: I stopped just before the end of Chapter 3 because I wanted to try and beat the secret boss, and then I just… Forgot to return. Need to get it done along with Chapter 4 before Chapter 5 drops this year.
Hyperdevotion Noire: It’s a sorta FF Tactics-style tactical RPG in the Neptuniaverse, focused exclusively on Noire and with a bunch of characters representing PlayStation-exclusive franchises. It’s pretty cute, but I had issues running it on Proton back in 2022 that should be fixed by now, meaning it should be good to play on my Steam Deck now. The main thing is I wanna clear 2 hours in playtime so I can redeem some of the cute Steam profile backgrounds LOL.
Super Neptunia RPG: A really gorgeous 2D platforming RPG in the Neptuniaverse that I initially got for Switch (the Switch port had serious performance issues), got the Steam version for, and forgot about in the end. I do wanna come back to it and finish it off so I don’t feel like I wasted a grand total of $100 CAD on both versions…
Date A Live Rio Reincarnation: I forgot why I bought this one. Probably because I see figures and merch of the characters in every hobby shop I visit, so I wanted to see what the fuss was about. Probably not in my wheelhouse, but it’s been sitting unplayed in my library for like two years now, so I gotta try it.
Milk Outside a Bag of Milk Outside a Bag of Milk: I played the original a couple years back—very short VN. This one’s also not too long, but I just haven’t gotten around to it.
Cyberpunk 2077: Never got Phantom Liberty and I never finished the base game either. I’d like to try my hand at a new character and build, so if the others in this list are done then maybe I’ll get the DLC and give it all a shot. I already really enjoyed the base game for what it was back in 2022. Oh, and it got a Mac port recently, so I’m curious as to how well my MacBook Pro can run it compared to my PC.
Sound Voltex: This May will mark three years I’ve spent with this game. My goal for this year is Eldora rank, but the long-term goal is Imperial or bust—I’m only going to stop if I ever feel like progressing any further in rating is truly unreasonable. If I do manage to hit Imperial, I’ll consider it “complete”, and it’ll mark my longest time to complete a game to date. The earliest I think I can expect to reach Imperial is 2027, possibly 2028 depending on how hard Crimson will be to get through. This is where the logarithmic progression curve really starts to set in.
Ooh, yeah, I definitely wish I were better about letting games go sometimes. I tend to have really bad completionist tendencies, which makes it hard to commit to new games, or return to games once I’ve set them down for a bit (Silksong, for example). Worse, I also tend to stick too long with games I’m mentally sort of not enjoying anymore. If I like a game, I’ll often feel like I should 100% it or get all the achievements or something, even if maybe giving it that extra investment only ends up detracting from what I was liking previously. That was kind of my experience with BALL x PIT, and Rock and Road - I liked them a lot, decided I should do all the achievements, spent an extra probably 10+ hours with each game just kind of grinding repetitive tasks well past the point of the base game being done, and ended up kind of liking both less for it.
I’ve gotten better about it - but mostly because life and other requirements get in the way of it, haha.
Im right there with you. It came also down to 40h workweek and having a child, but I barely finish most games anymore. Sometimes its quite sad, as Im heavily deciding by mood (which due to above factors is mostly “tired”) so stuff I want to explore keeps on falling off the cliff. Other times its just well, its cool but not for me in the end. Like Silksong, its quite neat but ultimately I do not want to master that kind of combat, it bores me. Sometimes I just Cheat Engine games I do not want to master because it conflicts with the real world, but still want to experience art or music, see what it is.
When there is not much energy left in the day due to managing life its often impossible for me to get into stuff that doesnt trigger some sort of old familiarity even though Id love to experiment more with interesting games.
Yep, I feel it, man. Younger me would just start and shelve a lot of stuff - older, more tired me just commits to playing way less things in the first place (still buying them though, haha.)
I’ve caught the turn-based RPG itch recently so I’m setting a pretty unrealistic goal (but working towards it will be fun). I want to play as much as I can from these series
SaGa
The first few games on the GB come in at around 10 hours a pop, which is doable. Then they get beefier on the SNES, and then they get even beefier on the PSX. But they all just look so interesting and I know nearly nothing about them.
Mana
A series I’ve always wanted to play - this one also seems to have a pretty forgiving level of time-spent rampup. The PSX Legends of Mana looks so beautiful; I’ve got to play it and see what’s going on there.
Xenoblade
Has been on my list for a long time. These are each a really big time investment (I have all four ready in the wings) so there’s no shot I do them all in one year, but one would be nice.
Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon - I started this game after Christmas and I am on the cusp on finishing my first playthrough of it.
To a T: It’s a Keita Takahashi game. Why wouldn’t I?
The Disappearing of Gensokyo: Gifted to me by an acquaintance.
Pyre: Other than Hades 2, this is the only thing by Supergiant that I haven’t played yet and it was gifted to me.
Gensokyo Night Festival: Gifted to me.
Touhou 15-18: I’m mostly familiar with the cast up to 14, but not after that and I accidentally got a gift card that wasn’t good for getting paseli so I used it to get some Touhou games.
Artificial Dream in Arcadia: Mainly why I’m going over some of the Touhou games before playing this fanmade one. I’ve never played a first person dungeon crawler game, especially one that’s very inspired by Shin Megami Tensei. This might be the year where I eat my veggies and expand my brain.
The Mana series is something I’ve heard so much about and Xenoblade is something that’s kinda just missed me. I am definitely gonna have to check those out, I hope they’re all awesome. Don’t worry about making them unrealistic, mine are pretty unrealistic too! I don’t think I’m gonna have the time or even will to punch through multiple 60-100+ hour games but I definitely need to play these before getting more (she says having just bought Assetto Corsa and living on the Tsukuba Fruits Line)