The Games I Want to Play in 2025

My backlog is so big that it hurts to look at. I need a strategy.

The Problem

I have a problem. My Steam library has grown to be so huge that every time I log on, I get choice paralysis. My backlog isn’t getting any smaller on it’s own (in fact, after the Steam Winter Sale 2024 it’s gotten bigger). When I log on and just stare at my Steam library for 30 minutes not knowing what to play it takes a lot of joy out of the experience. For me, clearing out my library of classics isn’t just about completion, it's also about bringing more fun into gaming. Now another year has gone by, it’s officially 2025, and I think it’s time to deal with my backlog problem.

Other Solutions and Why I Don’t Want Them

While brainstorming solutions for this, I looked to see what others were doing. Most people seem to like making lists of all their games and giving them tags in a spreadsheet like “must play”, “played”, “abandoned”, or “not interested”. Then they’ll stick to this list when deciding what to play. I have two problems with this approach.

This doesn’t account for new games coming out.

When a highly anticipated game comes out, playing along side your friends is part of the experience I hold dear to my heart. There’s nothing quite like getting on discord and trying to decipher where your friends are in a game while tip-toeing around potential spoilers. Also, is it so bad that I want to play these new games ASAP? I don’t think so.

I don’t have the attention span for all that.

I have over 250 games in my Steam library, and many of you probably have more. I’m not doing this for content to make money, so why should preparing to game feel like a job? No, I’m not going to go through all of my games and categorize them like that.

Turning Lemons Into Lemonade

Let’s turn some of those problems into solutions, shall we? First, I don’t want to go through all of my games. This one is easy. I figured there are twelve months in a year, and I could realistically finish a game a month if I played a normal amount, so I wrote down 12 games I think I want to play. This is just an estimate and not a rule; if I don’t finish a game a month, that’s ok with me. These games could be anything, as long as they’ll be out by the end of the year. I also used Steam’s library features to help with this. I sorted my games by their MetaCritic score and picked from the top of the list after I couldn’t think of more off the top of my head.

I also wanted that feeling of playing games alongside others more often than just the two 2025 releases on my list. I asked a few friends if they’d be interested in any of the games on my list, and to my surprise, a friend and my new-to-gaming girlfriend both wanted to play The Witcher 3: Wild hunt with me. Just like that I had a first game picked out and ready to go.

All in all, this was shaping up to be a reasonably low stress pay to clear out my backlog. I know I didn’t want this to feel like work, but I did let my data nerd out a bit and I made a small spreadsheet that can tell me what day I started a game, ended it, the meteoritic score, and how long HowLongToBeat.com says it should take to finish the game.

How’s It Going?

I know I said this was a plan for 2025, but in reality I started playing in mid December. So far, it’s been great. Me and my friends have been playing The Witcher a bunch, and discussing it too! It even gave me an excuse to get my girlfriend a Steam Deck for Christmas! She started playing on my Switch before this so I figured I could just use cloud sync to transfer the save to her Steam Deck. When she opened the Deck, I went to transfer the save for her and I realized my mistake. My Switch is hacked and blocked from talking to Nintendo’s servers. Cloud Sync requires a Nintendo account. Nothing a sleepless night of playing past the opening section of the game can’t fix.

Gotta Keep the Train Going

I’m a little worried that I may get bored of this structured approach to gaming later on in the year, but so far it’s been a blast. Gone are the days of staring at my monitor wondering what to play. Plus, if something comes up that makes me want to switch games, I don’t feel like I’m tied to my next game (which is planned to be Hollow Knight) at all until I start playing. I’ll keep you updated throughout the year with what I’m playing and how this strategy holds up/changes. I'm leaving you with my abridged spreadsheet in it's current form below, which I'll try to keep up to date.