It’s that time of year again! It’s love your backlog time.

Kim and Genni have once again put out a call to bloggers from around the community to celebrate their backlogs instead of being ashamed of them. Despite having almost no backlog, I still partake in the event because Kim and Genni are great and this gives me another excuse to continue trucking along with the various games I’ve been playing. As with last year, there are a series of questions for all correspondents to answer in February and then in March we’ll try to finish the game that has been in our backlog for the longest time. With all that said, here’s to our collective backlogs!

The effect that the apocalypse had on your backlog

Short answer: none

Recent world events haven’t had any influence over my spending habits and thus my backlog neither grew nor shrank. I always play through the games I pick up in a relatively timely manner and decide whether I’m going to finish them or move onto the next title. Shit going sideways last year did see me playing through more titles, so there is that though.

The oldest game in terms of release date

Technically speaking Disgaea is the oldest game in my backlog if you go off of the game’s original release date of 2003, however it wasn’t released onto Steam until 2016. Shadow Warrior is the oldest game in my backlog if we use Steam release dates as that released in 2013. Either way, both are considered cult classics in their respective genres so I look forward to seeing what all the fuss is about.

A game you bought on day one, only to not play it

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When I buy a game on day one I do so with the intention of starting it shortly after it finishes downloading. For a while I was buying games at release so I could play through them and quickly pump out reviews, but that was terrible so now I’m back to only buying things on day one if I really want to play them. I find this is a good system as it has allowed me to stay on top of what I’m playing without getting overwhelmed by a growing collection of unfinished titles.

The game which has spent the most time on your backlog

It’s a four way tie! All of the games I purchased during the Steam winter sale were bought at approximately the same time so all of those games have remained in my backlog for the month of January while I was finishing Yakuza: Like A Dragon and playing some more Monster Hunter World. Said titles are: Hitman 2, Disgaea, Shadow Warrior, and Metro Exodus. Huzzah for Steam sales!

The most recent addition to your library

Please see above.

The person responsible for adding the most entries to your backlog, due to their good recommendations

Myself. Again.

Serious answer: Mark Brown via Game Maker’s Toolkit, Adam Millard via the Architect of Games and Jason via the Frosty Canucks podcast. All three have either convinced me to give another shot to a game I originally passed over, or introduced me to interesting titles I’d never heard of before. Not all of the recommendations hit, but the variety on offer from the different suggestions does help me to find and try games I wouldn’t have thought I’d enjoy.

Well that’s all for the first part of this community challenge. Now I just need to finish one of those games…in March. I wonder what happens if I finish them all in February. Hahaha…no but seriously, Kim what do?

Until next time, thanks for reading.