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How to Shrink a 100-Game Video Game Backlog Without Guilt

By Lauren "Celeste" Rousell · October 7, 2026 · 10 min read

Trim a video game backlog by running every title through one decision: finish it, shelve it with a revisit date, or delete it. Then track what survives in a single place, whether that's a spreadsheet or a dedicated app. This guide gives you the framework, the criteria, and an honest comparison of both.

What is a video game backlog and why does it keep growing?

A video game backlog is the set of games you own or have committed to playing but haven't finished. A wishlist is different: those are games you might buy someday. The backlog is debt you've already incurred, and it compounds.

Backlog vs wishlist vs 'games I actually own'

Three lists, three problems. Your wishlist grows with every sale. Your library grows faster than your wishlist because of Humble Choice bundles, free Epic drops, and Steam discounts that make buying cheaper than deciding. Your finished list grows at maybe 20-40 hours per game, on a schedule that competes with shipping your own build.

The math is rigged. Acquiring a game takes one click; finishing one takes weeks. That's why tracking tools lean on auto-import: the Steam API exposes your library and playtime data, so apps can pull in 100+ titles without manual entry. The same principle applies to shipping your studio's work. A shared board beats scattered lists, which is why we built Inferno as an alternative to Trello for tiny crews.

How do you decide which games to keep, shelve, or remove from your backlog?

Run every game through one question first: would I start this today, right now, if the weekend were free? If the honest answer is no, it goes to one of two buckets: shelve or delete. Nothing stays in the main backlog out of inertia. The framework is finish, shelve, delete, and every game gets exactly one label.

The three-bucket test

Finish means you'd start it today and you can name why: the combat loop, the story, the co-op night with friends. These are the only games allowed on your active board.

Shelve means the game is good but the timing is wrong. It needs 40 hours you don't have this quarter, or it's a sequel to something you haven't played. Shelved games get a revisit date, not a vague "someday." If you can't commit to a date, it's not shelved. It's deleted with extra steps.

Delete means you're keeping it out of guilt. You paid $60 and never opened it, or a friend recommended it in a Discord thread two years ago and you feel bad. The money is already gone. The friendship survives. Delete it and reclaim the mental space.

Why 'someday' is a delete in disguise

A backlog of 100+ titles isn't a plan, it's a guilt ledger. "Someday" feels like a decision, but it's the absence of one, and it's why the list keeps growing instead of shrinking. The same discipline your tiny crew applies when cutting scope before a vertical slice applies here: a feature you'll never build doesn't belong on the board, and a game you'll never play doesn't belong on the list. Cut it, log the cut, and move on.

If you run your studio's backlog through a similar finish-shelve-delete pass, you already know the mechanics. The difference is that your personal list has no milestone deadline forcing the decision, so you have to impose one. Set a calendar reminder, triage in one sitting, and treat every "someday" as a delete unless it earns a date. That single rule is what separates a backlog you manage from one that manages you, and it's the same thinking behind how we approach scope in our Inferno vs HacknPlan breakdown.

Should you track your game backlog in Excel or use a dedicated game backlog app?

The honest answer: a spreadsheet wins on setup and control, an app wins on everything that happens after setup. For a tiny crew already living in task boards, the deciding factor is usually maintenance cost, not features.

What a spreadsheet does well

Setup takes 20 minutes. You pick your columns, sort by genre or platform, and you're done. Google Sheets is free, works offline, and you can restructure the whole thing whenever your finish-shelve-delete framework changes. No lock-in, no learning curve for a crew member who hates new tools.

What a spreadsheet does badly

Everything manual stays manual. Playtime has to be copied from Steam by hand, mobile capture means opening the sheet on a phone (painful at 100+ rows), and nothing updates itself. Every hour you spend maintaining the sheet is an hour not spent on the vertical slice. Spreadsheets also rot quietly: rows get duplicated, statuses drift, and nobody trusts the data after a few months.

What an app does well

Apps automate the boring parts: Steam imports, playtime sync, and one-tap capture when a friend recommends something on Discord. That matters more than it sounds, because free weekly drops keep inflating your pile. Epic gives away games every week, and each claim adds a row you didn't plan for (Epic Games Store free games).

What an app does badly

You inherit someone else's structure, and import rarely maps your existing sheet cleanly. Some tools charge monthly for features a spreadsheet gives you free, so check what's actually gated before committing; our own breakdown is on the pricing page. If your backlog is under 20 games, an app is overkill.

What features should the best game backlog app have?

Must-haves

Auto library sync is the first filter. If the app pulls your Steam library automatically, your video game backlog stays honest; if you type every title by hand, the list rots within a month. Status fields are second: you need at minimum "not started," "playing," "shelved," and "finished," because the finish-shelve-delete framework lives or dies on that column. Session logging is third. A one-click "played 45 minutes" entry tells you whether a game deserves to stay or go.

Low-friction capture rounds it out. When a friend drops a recommendation in Discord, adding it should take one paste and under ten seconds. Anything slower and you'll skip it, then forget it.

Nice-to-haves

Playtime estimates, tags by genre or mood, and a "next up" queue are genuinely useful but not dealbreakers. So are completion percentages and notes fields for why you shelved something. If an app has all four must-haves plus these, great. If it has beautiful graphs but manual entry, it will fail you.

When a general tool like Trello is enough

Trello can absolutely run a backlog: a card per game, lists for each status, a due date as a personal milestone. The tradeoff is manual everything: no library sync, no session logging, just discipline. The same tradeoff applies to task boards built for studios, including our own Inferno. We're built for shipping games with a tiny crew, not for syncing your Steam account, so as a personal backlog tracker you'd be doing entry by hand. Honest criteria beat shiny features every time.

How do you name and organize 100 games in your backlog without getting overwhelmed?

You already name branches and commits for strangers to read. Apply the same discipline to your video game backlog: a flat list with consistent prefixes beats folders you'll never maintain.

A naming scheme that survives 100 entries

Use [Platform] Title (Year) as the pattern: [PC] Void Stranger (2023), [Switch] Tunic (2022). The bracket sorts cleanly in any spreadsheet or board, and the year settles which of the three "Untitled Goose Game"-style duplicates you actually own. Skip sequel logic beyond the title itself; the release year does that work.

Tags worth keeping (and tags to skip)

Keep tags to three kinds: session shape (short, long-haul), mood (chill, intense), and status (started, shelved). Drop genre tags entirely; you know what a roguelike is, and genre tags rot into noise. If you want a kanban view of the same list, Trello handles free-form boards with labels well, though it won't know anything about games specifically.

The same problem shows up at work: a studio backlog of 200 tasks needs identical naming discipline, which is why we compared our approach to Codecks in Inferno vs Codecks.

What is a late game backlog and how do you handle games you've abandoned for years?

A late game backlog is the pile of titles untouched for two or more years. If you're running a tiny crew, your evenings are short, and every guilt-hoarded entry makes the whole list harder to scan. A backlog you dread opening stops functioning as a backlog at all.

The two-year rule

Once a year, go through your list and apply the finish-shelve-delete framework with a stricter threshold: anything untouched for 2+ years gets deleted, not shelved. Shelving is for games you'd realistically start next quarter. Two years of silence means the interest was nostalgia, not intent. Tools like Backloggd let you tag and filter by date added, so the purge takes one evening instead of a weekend.

Rebuying later is cheaper than hoarding now

The fear behind hoarding is "what if it goes away or gets expensive?" In practice, games go on sale constantly, and many abandoned titles get remasters or bundles later. Deleting a $15 game you might rebuy in three years costs less than the mental drag of 100 guilty entries today. Ship the purge, keep the list honest.

How do you keep a video game backlog from growing again after you've trimmed it?

Trimming once is a milestone. Keeping it trimmed is a habit, and habits need to be small enough to survive a crunch month.

One in, one out

For every game you add, one leaves the backlog. Finished, shelved, or deleted, your choice. If nothing has earned removal, the new game waits. This is the same discipline that stops scope creep on a build: no new work enters until something ships or gets cut.

Add a cooling-off period for purchases. Wishlists are free; buying is a commitment. Wait 30 days after adding a game to your wishlist before buying it. Most impulses die in that window, and the ones that survive are games you'll actually play.

The 15-minute monthly review

Once a month, set a timer for 15 minutes and run your finish-shelve-delete pass on whatever grew since the last review. Same criteria, same decisions, no archaeology. Calendar it like a sprint retrospective so it survives busy weeks.

If your trimmed list lives in the same tool as your studio's task board, this review takes even less context-switching. That's the honest limit of the habit, though: no tool enforces it. The timer does.

FAQ

What is a video game backlog?

It is the set of games you own or committed to playing but haven't finished. Unlike a wishlist, which is games you might buy someday, the backlog is debt you've already incurred. It grows faster than you finish because acquiring a game takes one click while finishing one takes weeks of evening time.

How many games is too many for a backlog?

Past 20 games, a dedicated app starts earning its keep; below that, a spreadsheet handles everything. The real ceiling isn't a number, it's whether you'd start any entry today if the weekend were free. A list you dread opening has already stopped functioning, whatever its size.

Is Excel or an app better for tracking a game backlog?

A spreadsheet wins on setup, at roughly 20 minutes, and total control with no fees. An app wins after setup: Steam auto-import, automatic playtime sync, and one-tap capture on mobile. Spreadsheets rot quietly through duplicated rows and drifting statuses, so the deciding factor is usually maintenance cost, not features.

How do I organize 100 games in my backlog?

Use a flat list with the pattern [Platform] Title (Year), like [PC] Void Stranger (2023). Brackets sort cleanly anywhere and the year settles duplicates. Keep tags to three kinds: session shape, mood, and status. Drop genre tags entirely; they rot into noise you'll never filter by.

What do I do with games I've abandoned for years?

Apply the two-year rule: anything untouched for two or more years gets deleted, not shelved. Shelving is for games you'd realistically start next quarter; two years of silence means the interest was nostalgia, not intent. Games go on sale constantly, so rebuying later costs less than hoarding guilt now.