Actually starting the gaming backlog I started 5 years ago

Back in 2020 I didn't exactly have a gaming backlog, I had about 20 Steam games that I couldn't play because my laptop was a potato. A few from a single bundle (it was some Humble Bundle thing that was a little expensive by my standards but full of quality titles), a few that I got as gifts and a few that I bought to play some day, and also a few other games to get someday on my wishlist. Ultimately just a small collection of games to play rather than what people currently describe as a backlog, even back then when I didn't have literally thousands of games I viewed this as small, I obviously knew there was an ocean out there, I just hadn't bothered with it or straying far from my bubble of Nintendoslop and platformerslop and fightinggameslop and RPGslop; as a kid I did play tons of random games online but they were just short little flash games and such as opposed to huge complete experiences.

I don't know if these were a thing before but since 2020 I started noticing Itch.io was having yearly MASSIVE bundles for charity starting with the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality, featuring 1391 creators, 1741 items priced at a total of $11,105 for just $5, what a steal, as I always said even if you got it just for Night in the Woods it was a crazy deal. (I already had Night in the Woods though...)

I downloaded a couple of games and thingies that caught my attention, from your library on Itch.io you can go to the bundle you bought and it'll display all the items in it in separate pages 30 by 30, I looked at the first few pages and picked some from there, at the time I didn't have a plan for how I'd ever play the 1000+ games I got if I was to at all but I enjoyed the games I played, not Night in the Woods though because I already had it.

One of the games I played was this thing called WitchWay, it's a cute little puzzle platformer that I'm surprised more people don't know, it might be due to being only on Itch.io or it simply didn't get advertised too much, the launch trailer is at 34k views but it's the type of thing I'd expect to have hundreds of ks.

Then came the Indie bundle for Palestinian Aid in 2021 and the Bundle for Ukraine in 2022, with 847 and 567 games respectively, a thing I came to notice eventually was that there was a good amount of overlap with the previous bundle (neither of them had Night in the Woods though) so that means I don't have necessarily 2516 games to play, but perhaps closer to 2000.

As a sidenote I noticed all of these had at least 0.4x in physical games the number they had on digital games (Racial Justice and Equality bundle had 1102 games and 456 physical games for example), I had no idea the scene was so big on Itch.io but I don't plan on playing those, maybe some random day I'll go crazy and look at every single physical game tab to see how they go or whatever but I'm not playing anything unless it really catches my attention which makes me glad Night in the Woods is not a physical game because I wouldn't have played it anyways.

But with a catalog of 2000 owned games what do you do? How do you even begin to play that? (It's more like 1999 since I already played Night in the Woods) Obviously you'll need like an excel spreadsheet or some shit, it's too much, but are you even going to play them all? Well, do Game Pass owners pla- Hahaha nobody has Game Pass now forget it. But taking a page out of Daryl's book I had the idea of at least trying out all of the games (tbh idk if I linked the video where he mentions that, he makes one of these yearly to give an update in how he's dealing with it, it's a great series if this slop interests you), crazier people would try to 100% them or even finish them, but with a catalogue of 1999 games it's bound to have some stinkers, stinkyyyyyy, and naturally I don't like all game genres so even some great ones might just not be for me, but having such a massive catalog is like I've been blessed with tons of inspiration to draw from when making my own stuff as well as simply enrichening my uhhh, experiences? Like it's just cool to try out so many games. It won't always be learning experiences, fun, or enrichening, I know there's going to be some bullshit somewhere, but hey the upside is that by trying all the bad ones I'll discover the good ones and enjoy and blah blah.

But how do I literally do this? As I mentioned Itch.io gives you a list of 30 items in pages, but this is not categorized so it's HORRIBLE!!! You get a game then a physical game then a game then an asset then a mysterious fourth thing then a game then you get the point. Luckily the actual bundle's page categorizes it like this:

While I liked the pages system because it neatly organizes them in groups of 30 this is much better because I can set it to just the games, what I then do is Ctrl + Click to open in new tab and then go through all of them and add it to an Itch.io collection of games I'm gonna play, this is a fast process because it automatically selects the collection you most recently used and you just gotta click save, it's two clicks total but multiply that by 1999 lol.

I considered making a separate collection for each bundle, but since there are repeats I could accidentally end up with the same game on two lists (you can't add the same game twice to the same collection so that won't be a problem), and obviously I'll notice when it's a good game I already played and liked, but I'll end up playing the stinkers several times this way due to not remembering them well. Once I've finished adding them all I'll go by most recently added and play from there, since Itch.io collections have no sorting options 🤧 hashtag no shade. Ideally you'd be able to organize them by alphabetical order, most recent, least recent, etc. But here instead you get the most recent at the top and then you can move each one with their neighboring game, if you think this is bad I'll correct you and tell you it's atrocious actually.

Like are you fucking kidding me.

So yeah, that's the method to start playing but what do I do afterwards? I've maintained a list of games I've finished for a few years now, but the keyword is finished (Well sandboxes and other endless games are also included I just need to play enough of them substantially to include them) what do I do about the stinkers? Normally I wouldn't do anything at all with them and that's probably what I'll do, I figured I'd write down my thoughts on each game and see what I do with that text in the future, but there's bound to be some stinkers where I don't have anything to say and I don't want a long list of "Game Title - Boring" so while I'll try to at least write down a few sentences for each game some are bound to be just that, I'll probably compile a list of the games I didn't have anything worth saying and simply exclude them from anything I do with the actual useful text. I know bad games usually give you a lot to talk about but that simply won't always be the case!!!

Maybe I'll keep my exact thoughts a secret and become a wise old wizard who randomly teaches people about the art of videogames, I'll be the Fruzard. Or maybe I'll make a bunch of blog posts about my general thoughts, who knows, but writing down my thoughts is essential. Oh or maybe I'll become a 5hourlongvideotuber that talks extensively about silly games they played, who knows.

Oh right, I also have about 100 games to try on Steam, but as you can tell by the far more limited number, most of them are games I actually am already interested in playing, I'll tackle them here and there, this is mostly about those massive Itch.io bundles.

Now to find the time to actually play them lmfao. ✨