The May 2025 Backlog Burner event is officially over!

Over the month of May, 13 participants moved 170 games out of their backlogs.

There were 4 standard bingo wins from:

• u/Durinthal
• u/Eidolon
• u/kfwyre
• u/SingedFrostLantern

There was 1 anti-bingo win from:

• u/aphoenix

There was 1 traditional bingo blackout from:

• u/J-Chiptunator

There was 1 golf bingo win from:

• u/CannibalisticApple

There were 31 daily posts(!!!) made by:

• u/1338

A big thank you to ALL who participated in the event, whether that was by playing games, joining in conversations, or reading people's posts here.

It has been an absolute blast doing this with everyone. I truly love this event. Thank you all.

Use this topic to post your final bingo cards, give recaps of your games, and share any thoughts you have on the event itself.

See you again for the next Backlog Burner in November 2025!

Statistics

• We averaged 13.1 games per person and 38.4 games per week.
• There were 293 comments posted across 5 different topics.
• We played games that started with every letter of the alphabet except X
• Not a single game played had "Super" anywhere in its title.

Platforms

Games were played on at least 31 different platforms

• Arcade
• Bandai Wonderswan
• Microsoft Xbox
• Microsoft Xbox 360
• Mobile
• NEC Turbografx-CD
• Nintendo 3DS
• Nintendo DS
• Nintendo Entertainment System
• Nintendo Famicom Disk System
• Nintendo Game Boy
• Nintendo Game Boy Advance
• Nintendo Game Boy Color
• Nintendo Gamecube
• Nintendo Switch
• Nintendo Virtual Boy
• Nintendo Wii
• Nintendo Wii U
• Panasonic 3DO
• PC (Windows)
• PC (Linux)
• Playdate
• Sega Genesis
• Sega Master System
• Sega Saturn
• Sony PlayStation 2
• Sony PlayStation 4
• Sony Playstation Move
• Steam Deck
• Super Nintendo Entertainment System
• Tabletop

Animals and more

Players played as at least 38 non-human protagonists:

• 1 AI (ctrl.alt.DEAL)
• 1 badger (Shelter)
• 1 bird (A Short Hike)
• 5 cats (I and Me (x2), MLEM: Space Agency, Tales of the Neon Sea (x2))
• Cthulhu (Cthulhu Saves the World)
• 2 dogs (Chicory: A Colorful Tale, Recommendation Dog)
• 1 dolphin (Ecco the Dolphin)
• 1 dung beetle (Yoku's Island Express)
• 1 fox (TUNIC)
• 1 frog (Frog Fractions: Game of the Decade Edition)
• 1 goat (Goat Simulator 3)
• 1 god (Hades)
• 1 golf ball (Golfing Over It with Alva Majo)
• 1 grimp (PixelJunk Eden)
• 1 pillow Kirby (Kirby's Block Ball)
• 1 lynx (Shelter 2)
• 1 monster (Monster Prom)
• 1 Nightmaren (NiGHTS Into Dreams...)
• 1 pawn (Questy Chess)
• 1 pool ball (Pool Panic)
• 1 rabbit (Lugaru HD)
• 2 rats (Propeller Rat, SpaceRat Miner)
• 1 Rythulian (Journey)
• 6 robots (BEEP, Choice of Robots, Core Fault, Joy Mech Fight, Machinarium, SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech)
• 1 squirrel with a gun (Squirrel With a Gun)
• 1 tapeworm (Tapeworm Disco Puzzle)

Also, this doesn't technically count but I'm including it anyway:

• 1 IRL human (JoustMania)

Highlights

The following highlights were aggregated from participants and focus on the whole event or other participants. Thank you to those of you who wrote in! I'm sharing these as written and randomized, though I did make some minor edits: for flow and consistency, to maintain anonymity, to add usernames, and to link to specific comments when needed.

• Shout out @J-Chiptunator who played on more consoles than I played games this month

• I think one or two people came back to games after a decade, which is really cool to see (u/Wes: Grand Theft Auto V and u/CannibalisticApple: Animal Crossing)

• I really enjoyed the heartfelt Animal Crossing write-up by @CannibalisticApple, which made me feel ten years old again.

• I thought it was sweet that aphoenix played a game recommended by someone else on the site

• @1338's daily recap of the event. While I love the Bingo cards that we've done for the last few, I also really just enjoyed the love of the game and sticking to it every day like a blog.

• I want to mention @J-Chiptunator for writing a full novella every other week, in alphabetical order.

• u/aphoenix's deception

• There were a couple of callbacks to games played in previous events. I think it's neat that some games are getting shared play over time in these.

• @kfwyre choosing a non-Steam/non-PC gaming platform was very cool.

• The big one was of course @aphoenix's anti-bingo. That was super clever and well-delivered.

• Games given away during the giveaway threads showing up in the Backlog Burner

• Fantastic write-ups from so many people. There were so many thoughtful posts about games, and they helped me to structure my own backlog when there was overlap.

• I very much enjoyed Wes' post for Golfing Over It with Alva Majo regarding game design, games that defy familiar rules to engage the player, and making improvements after losing progress.

• Durinthal @ PAX East

• I respect 1338 for playing and posting daily. What a way to burn through the backlog!

• aphoenix delivering on his devious plan

• Awesome that Wes made the site for this event

• @1338 for being the most consistent poster, contributing a new game every single day. Crazy dedication.

• @Durinthal playing at PAX East was super cool

• Wes doubling up on Archipelago and Backlog Burner

• 1338 signing off from the event with the Oblivion Remaster

Personal Highlights

These were highlights that were shared from players that focused on themselves. For these, I have included their names:

u/Eidolon: I want to say that this has been my most successful Backlog Burner yet, because I actually got a couple of games to 100% completion. So the bingo was just a bonus!

u/aphoenix: To anyone else who reads, thank you for participating in an event like this. It's nice to feel connected to people. It's easy to feel splintered and disconnected today, and things like this is exactly what I hoped to get from the internet when I was first playing The 7th Guest years ago. <3 for everyone here!

u/CannibalisticApple:

• Finishing The Letter to say goodbye to my Wii U as part of leaving my old house
• Playing the original Animal Crossing for the first time in just over eleven years to greet my new house
• Getting a chance to chat with people about games I've also played, and see all these other games that could also be fun
• Seeing the sheer number of games with cats. And then realizing how many games I own that star cats.

u/Wes: I moved The Swapper from own library into my backlog based on @aphoenix's write-up here, and @1338 put Sea of Stars on my radar.

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

There's some moral issues about big publishers' business practices. Somehow, almost all racing games for example are EA. Like it's actually crazy lol - so despite wanting to play them, we do not wish to do that. Similarly, a lot of other co-op games are Ubisoft.

So looking for recommendations! Almost any genre and type are appreciated - only exception is games with pixel graphics (just really unpleasant to look at for me).

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

Hi all, hoping you might be able to help me. This seemed like the closest Tildes category to post in. Maybe a year ago, I noticed I had tracked something into my apartment on my shoes and it left gunk on the floor. I cleaned as best I could and most of it came off but one major spot stained. Everything I tried wouldn't take it off. Over the last year it darkened and is the darkest spot in the photo.

I was never able to clean it off or figure out exactly what I got stuck on my shoe to cause it. Until a couple days ago when it happened again. And eventually I put two and two together. There's some type of tree that drops some kind of nut or seed near the parking area and when I walk to my trunk after parking I accidentally stepped in one which smushed into my shoe and tracked into the apartment. I don't know what kind of tree or seed it is, but that's what stained it.

Now that it's happened again it's even worse and I cannot for the life of me clean this off. I have tried 409, rubbing alcohol, Goo Gone, bleach, hydrogen peroxide and nothing cleans this crap off more than it is in the photo. Even scrubbed it with a sponge scrub pad and nothing. It's a smooth surface so it's not like a chunk I can scrape off, it's just like stained the laminate floor.

Any suggestions on what else I can use to clean this gunk once and for all without damaging my apartments floor?

Thanks! Here's the photo: https://imgur.com/a/pQ5hw36

Edit: I've set up a Discord and have sent invites out to any folks who have commented below. If you're interested and didn't comment below, feel free to ping me directly and I'll share an invite link!

Disclaimer: aside from a somewhat recent Helldivers 2 thread, there hasn't been a full-on "LFG" topic on Tildes in several years, so if this isn't well-received, I'd be happy to delete this and repost it as a parent-level comment in the "What are you playing" topic instead.

I initially thought about posting this in the appropriate subreddit(s) over on The Other Site^TM, but after giving it some thought, I figured I'd much rather garner interest from my fellow Tildes users before opening myself up to all the extra noise there.

Purpose

This is an LFG post for those of us who may only have a couple of very specific hours to play any given day, who also may have unforeseen hard stops mid-session, and who might go for long stretches of time without playing. The kind of LFG for folks who might enjoy multiplayer games, but rarely choose to engage in them because (a) you can't find the time, or (b), when you do find the time, the last thing you'd want to do is let folks down because you might have to step away mid-game. In my case, we have an infant at home and I'm really only ever available to play for a couple hours after he goes to bed... but if he wakes up, I'm going to leave mid-match to take care of him, no exceptions. This LFG is for folks who wouldn't mind that happening to them mid-game, because I certainly wouldn't mind extending the same grace to them in return! I originally was going to call this "An LFG for parents," but I'm sure there are other folks who find themselves in similar situations but don't have children, and didn't want to exclude them :)

I'll start with my own time windows and gaming preferences, and I invite others to post their own parent LFGs in the comments if they are so inclined.

Availability

North America (CDT, UTC-5), I tend to play from 8:30-10:30pm. Could be any day of the week. Weeknights are usually more consistent but it really just depends how the little guy is sleeping.

Choice of system

PC (not opposed to PS5 or Switch in the future, just don't have any games slated on them at the moment)

Games

1. Elden Ring Nightreign - I just picked this up and am most interested in this
2. Helldivers 2 - I haven't touched it in months but would love to check out all the new content
3. Deep Rock Galactic - same situation as Helldivers 2, only difference being that I consider myself actually halfway decent at DRG :)

If it would sweeten the pot, I'd also be happy to team up with folks in Elden Ring, including DLC, in exchange for somewhat competent teammates in Nightreign. Well, more competent than randos, which, bar is pretty low.

Looking forward to the discussion and hope we can bring some folks together!

EDIT (posting down here for added visibility) - Please PM me if you're interested but don't want to comment, and I'll send you an invite link to the Discord! Thanks!

Add awesome game deals to this topic as they come up over the course of the week!

Alternately, ask about a given game deal if you want the community’s opinions: e.g. “What games from this bundle are most worth my attention?”

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• No grey market sales
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If posting a sale, it is strongly encouraged that you share why you think the available game/games are worthwhile.

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That is it. Just a personal post, a personal story, or a useless rant. You decide. Everyone knows men are bad at friendship. I know I am bad at friendship. There seems to be an invisible wall around each man. I had the hurtful experience of learning that some friendships are transactional. They last as long as both parties have something to gain from each other.

Many years ago, certainly more than a decade, I met this young fellow at a production van for a film we were both working on. He was a low-level production assistant; I was a script supervisor. He was an aspiring writer and learned that I was a screenwriter. I offered to teach him what I knew about screenwriting for free. I was a student myself, so it didn’t make sense for me to charge for lessons. He came to my house a few times, and I told him everything I knew. Loglines, storylines, outlines, structure, format. The works. It was awesome.

For many years he sent me his originals (usually short stories), which I reviewed diligently, as others had done for me in the past. One day, after reading one of his stories, I told him something along the lines of "You have surpassed me and I have nothing left to teach you. I will still read your stuff if you want, but now you will read my stuff as well because I want your advice." And I meant it.

Years passed, and we no longer read each other’s originals. I don’t know why; it just happened. He still visited me regularly, especially for lunches and dinners with my family (as Brazilians, the dividing line between family and friendships is either thin or nonexistent).

COVID happened, taking a slice of everyone’s personal history. I moved out of the family home, got married, had a kid. In the meantime, he sent me a message asking for help. He was depressed, paranoid, scared to leave the house. I visited him the next day and gave all the advice I had accumulated from being a psychiatric patient for the last 20 years or so.

After that I occasionally sent him messages asking how he was. Sometimes he answered. When my son was born, I sent him a picture and asked him to come visit. He responded but never came. I kept inviting him, making it clear that it was important for him to be a part of my life in that new phase. I invited him to the first birthday of my son. He answered with an emoji. He didn’t come. The last message I sent him was two weeks ago. Seen. No response.

He has an online presence, and I can see that he takes part in multiple social events related to his career as a writer. Book launches, lectures, online talks, academic events. Surrounded by people, calmly smiling and perfectly content. There are videos for a lot of that stuff.

Although the last time we talked he was emphatic that he was much better and able to work, it is conceivable that he is unwell. But it is hard to reconcile that with the fact that he seems quite capable of socializing with everyone except me.

Everyone, it seems, who is instrumental to his career. Which I no longer am.

That fucking hurts.

Is this just something men do? Is he scared of catching fatherhood from me like it's the flu? Is this an expression of his ideas of masculinity?

I'll never know because he doesn't answer, and if he did, he would never talk about that because men don't talk about anything that matter.

When I won my first grant as a screenwriter 18 years ago, I hired him as an assistant and we traveled together to a remote location where I thought I would be able to concentrate on my writing. He was supposed to help me and he did, even if a lot of what he did was just talk to me all day. That probably helped more than anything he could do in regard to the actual writing. And now I am asking myself, was that wonderful friendship-building experience just a paycheck for him?

I am ending this. I am ending this even if he does not realize. That is incredibly demeaning and I feel tired. Whatever the reason for him drifting apart, it is not for me to resolve. If someday he finds a reason to reach out, even if it is transactional in nature, I will be there for him. For now, I must say, it's goodbye, old friend.