Report #77
Well, I gave up on beating my backlog and activated all keys from my hidden shadow backlog of unused keys. My completed games shrank from 60% to 17% :D
Ultimately it was a good thing though, because some keys did not work anymore and that surely would not have improved with more time going by. And now I’m completely free of any kind of hidden backlog. In addition, even with my old backlog I was not expecting to finish my backlog in the next decade… Consequently I adjusted my goals. From now on I will concentrate on reducing my unfinished and beaten games, without taking my unplayed games into consideration. I think that’s still a big task but much more realistic than finishing more than 1000 unplayed games! At the moment I’m at a combined 98 games in the unfinished and beaten category. For the remainder of 2025 my goal is just to stay under 100 games. For 2026 I don’t know yet. I’m unsure how to handle games with broken achievements though, like Omerta for example, where the Multiplayer does not work anymore and the corresponding achievements are unobtainable. Those games would stay forever in the beaten category, but if there is no legitimate way to get remaining achievement, aren’t they completed by all means?
In the last months I played quite a few free demos and prologues to test out a few interesting looking games. Anyways, here is my list of games from the second half of 2025:
Completed Games
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Survival Horror #8,436
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Intravenous 2: Mercenarism
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Caribbean Crashers
0.3 hours playtime
no achievements
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
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Deiland
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Summer in Mara Prologue
0.4 hours playtime
no achievements
Rating: ★★★☆☆
-
The RPG: My First Dungeon Smells
3.1 hours playtime
no achievements
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
-
Hero's Hour
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SiN Gold
13.4 hours playtime
no achievements
Rating: ★★★★☆
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Puzzle Chambers
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Away
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Gladiator Guild Manager: Prologue
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Escape from Ever After: Onboarding
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Half-Life: Cross Product
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Day of the Dino
0.7 hours playtime
no achievements
Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
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Warlander
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Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodhunt
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Tiny Battles: Prologue
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Sherlock Holmes: The Secret of the Silver Earring
7.5 hours playtime
no achievements
Rating: ★★★★☆
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Darwinia
9.9 hours playtime
no achievements
Rating: ★★★★☆
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Portal 2
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Death Roads: Tournament Prologue
0.9 hours playtime
no achievements
Rating: ★★★★☆
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MirrorMoon EP
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Dungeon Tycoon: Prologue
1.9 hours playtime
no achievements
Rating: ★★★☆☆
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My Friend Peppa Pig
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Uplink
4.7 hours playtime
no achievements
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
Some games stood out to me:
- SiN, an ancient shooter from 1998, which was great fun despite its age.
- Darwinia, a RTS which is really unlike any other RTS. The age definitely shows and I think it's good that the game is rather short, but it is some really unique gameplay.
- Portal 2, where I finally managed to finish the Coop after almost 12 years!
I’m happy to elaborate further if you have any questions, but I’m trying to cut down on meta-gaming, so I won’t do longer reviews anymore.
Happy backlog clearing,
Vito
2025 goals -> Unfinished + Beaten: 98/100
My completed games shrank from 60% to 17% :D
That… might just deserve an award in its own right.
I know, right :D I had a relatively low number of games before though
I consider completed and beaten as one batch. I try to complete some games from the beaten group, but I know I won’t be able to do it with every game - be it for broken achievements or for my lack of skill. ;)
I would concentrate on the unfinished on its own, without the beaten category - completing a game from it is just a sweet bonus.
Those games would stay forever in the beaten category, but if there is no legitimate way to get remaining achievement, aren’t they completed by all means?
Sure thing - you can put it in completed, you can leave it in beaten, you can create an extra tag for it (“broken achievements”) - whatever suits you. :)
Oh yeah, some games I will never complete. Some are too hard, some are just not that enjoyable and some take way too much time. However, I have a few games in the beaten category I would definitely like to revisit at some point, e.g. some of the Assassin’s Creed games, L.A. Noire or M&B Warband. But we’ll see, I’m mainly playing new games at the moment.
Thank you for your input and your ideas. I like creating a “broken achievement” tag, that’s a neat solution. I’ll think a bit about it…until my next post mid-2026 probably :D
For many of us, beating the backlog is impossible. BLAEO is like group therapy where we post about our progress and feel better about it. Playing and “beating” games should never be a chore.
Thank you for your kind words. Definitely true. But I got to admit, until a few months ago I was really hoping to completely beat my backlog some day. Now I’m sure that was an illusion all along and it feels much better to let go of that goal.
Sometimes being too strict with beating games can feel like a chore, I agree. But usually it serves as a motivation for me to fully explore a game. If playing games feels like a chore, it’s better to take a step away from it for some time! There are plenty of other things to do after all :)