There’s a game coming out this year where you fight your Steam backlog, and it’s more dangerous the more you’ve spent

I’d wager most PC gamers are grappling with a backlog—the only thing that truly divides us is whether it’s a source of pride or filthy shame. Steam, GOG, and other digital storefronts just make it too easy. I’m a busy guy, am I really going to make time to play through all of Tex Murphy: The Pandora Directive? It’s going for $2 out here, who cares!

But those are the fun backlog stories. The less fun ones are when you pick up a game like Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous for full price and, you know, you’ll finish it one of these days, but everyone’s hopping on Overwatch 2 and you can’t just abandon your premade. And so it sits there, rotting, hoping one day you remember it long enough to get past the first act. Those are the stories Game Quest: The Backlog Battler hopes to rub in your face.

It’s a goofy horde battler by developer Nic Taylor where you literally fight your backlog. They’re represented by sliding floppy disks and various stats affect their behavior and abilities—Steam games you’ve barely played (up to 2 hours) are your enemies, and the more you paid for them, the more damage they do. If they have a high Metacritic score, they can fly, and you’ll need to swat them all to death with a keyboard.

You’ll have help, though, as the games you play the most will back you up. Given that my most played games on Steam are, by a huge margin, Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2, I assume I’m in for some superlatively toxic teammates. Fellow PC Gamer weekend warrior Ted Litchfield would be blessed by Baldur’s Gate 3 and cursed by Destiny 2 in equal measure.

The game looks cute and clever, and it seems the most fun awaits in fighting the backlogs of your friends and shaming them for their life decisions. ‘You played Planescape: Torment for all of 36 minutes but have 400 hours in Spore? What are you even doing in there?’ If I can make a suggestion, I think the game should cook up a unique punishment for my own worst gaming habit: getting past the halfway point of a game, putting it down for a few weeks, and then returning with so little memory of what came before that I feel compelled to start over.

There’s no release date for Game Quest yet, but you can wishlist it on Steam. I can’t help but wonder how many players will grab this very game for their Steam libraries and never play it, knowing they’ll get to it eventually.