November 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 1 Discussion
The blaze has officially ignited!
- Quicklink: Backlog Bingo
Etiquette:
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It is fine to make multiple top-level posts throughout the week.
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It is also fine to respond to your own posts.
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If you are playing Backlog Bingo, you can share your table either by markdown or through screenshots.
Gameplay guidelines:
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Goals for this event (if any) are entirely individual and self-determined.
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Playing Bingo is optional and not required.
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You do NOT need to finish games unless you want to. The point is to try out games and have fun, not force ourselves to play things we're not interested in.
Backlog Burner FAQ
What exactly is the Backlog Burner?
Your "backlog" is all those games you've been meaning to play or get around to, but never have yet. This event is an attempt to get us to collectively dig into that treasure trove of experiences, scratch some long-standing itches, and knock a few titles off our to-play lists.
It runs every May and November. New discussion topics will go up once a week during those months.
You do not need to sign up in advance -- the topics are open to all. If you would like to be included in the notification list, comment in this topic to be added.
How do I participate?
- Choose some games from your backlog and play them.
- Then tell us about your experiences in the discussion thread for the week.
That's it!
Optionally: you can play Backlog Bingo which is a fun way of cutting down the choices you have to make and playing games you might not have normally selected on your own.
Do I need to finish the games that I play?
Nope! Not at all.
There aren't really any requirements for the event so much as this is an incentive to get us to play games we've been avoiding starting up, for whatever reason. Play as much or as little as you like of a given game.
Try out dozens for ten minutes each or dive into one for 40 hours. There's no wrong way to participate!
Can I make multiple posts in the same topic?
Yes! Each discussion thread stays live for a full week, so feel free to make multiple comments in the topic as you play different games. This isn't considered noise -- it's considered valuable participation in the event!
Backlog Bingo FAQ
Important: All data for your Backlog Bingo card is stored on your device, not the server. Clearing your browser data will delete your card. You can use the export feature to make backups or move your card between devices.
I'm a returning player. How do I reset my previous card?
If you've already created a card and wish to start over, click the Settings button in the header to access your card settings. Then click the Reset button, and confirm the prompt. This will irrevocably delete your present card, allowing you to start fresh.
Where is my data stored?
All data is stored by your browser in local storage. There are no accounts, and nothing is sent to the server, so it's privacy-friendly by design. This does mean that you are responsible for not deleting any browser data on wescook.ca, either manually or through automatic cleanups performed on browser close.
Backlog Bingo is open-source, and licensed permissively under MIT.
What is the difference between the "Standard" and "Golf" modes?
In Standard Mode, each square on the bingo card corresponds with one single game. Duplicate games cannot be entered into different squares. A winning card would have a row of five different games that each filled in one square.
In Golf Mode, duplicates are not only allowed -- they are encouraged! The purpose of Golf mode is to try to find a single game that will fill multiple categories at the same time. For example: Stardew Valley might fulfill You got it on sale, A solo-dev project, and Has romanceable characters all at the same time. A winning card would have all twenty five squares filled, but possibly only six or seven different games.
What is the star space in the middle?
That is the "wildcard" or "free space."
In Standard Mode, there are no requirements to fill it. You can choose any game you want! Anything goes!
In Golf Mode, it does not need to be filled. Because Golf is all about stacking up categories on a single game, any game used in Golf would fill it automatically, meaning it has no real function. As such, the square will be pre-filled for you if you play in Golf mode.
The new Free list defaults to having this space turned off. Because you already have full freedom in how you fill the squares, having a free space is redundant (though if you miss it or just like the aesthetics, you can certainly turn it back on!).
Can I create custom bingo categories for this, or other events?
Absolutely! The Backlog Bingo app reads in simple JSON files which define the available categories. We've created a couple prebuilt lists for this event, but you're free to tweak our categories, or create completely new ones. You could even use them for books, anime, movies, recipes -- anything!
If you are interested in learning more, you can find documentation on the wiki, and use an example JSON category file. You can also ask for help in the topic!
kfwyre's Platform Party!
itch.io✅ REDDER
That's right, I'm going for a full blackout across twenty five different gaming platforms! I'll be targeting short games (under 5 hours for the HowLongToBeat main story time).
BUT, I'm also going for a spiral win. So, instead of choosing from all over the bingo card as I see fit,
I'm planning to startI already started in the upper left corner withitch.ioand will be making my way clockwise around the card.I'm looking forward to playing some fun games and reading everyone's interesting writeups.
REDDER (itch.io)
My itch.io library is thousands of games that I've gotten in charity megabundles, and like, thirty that I've actually bought purposefully on their own.
REDDER is one of those deliberate purchases.
It's a 2010 web/Flash game that doesn't feel like a Flash game at all (I actually forgot that it was made in Flash until I tapped my Steam Deck screen during the gameplay and the context menu popped up).
You're on a spaceship exploring when your power crystals are unexpectedly vacated, causing you to have to make an emergency landing on a very red planet. From there, you have to traverse the alien landscape and recover them, allowing you to once again leave.
The game is an obvious nod to Metroid, but the main draw that made me want to play REDDER was that it was an inspiration for VVVVVV, which is genuinely one of my favorite games of all time (early in the game you end up on a screen that also appears in VVVVVV as an homage).
Structurally, the game is a grid of single-screen 2D levels. There's no scrolling -- as you leave the edge of one screen, you end up on the next. Your goal is to explore the map and recover the power crystals for your ship.
The map is helpful, but it is only non-descript, identical squares. It gives you your overall location on the topography, but it doesn't reveal the internal structure of all those various levels, so you still have to mentally map routes throughout the game world. There are plenty of times where you're able to get to a screen with a crystal to grab, only to find out that the route you got there by doesn't allow you to collect it. The game is primarily one of pathfinding.
One thing I liked is that REDDER is specifically NOT a metroidvania. You never gain new powers that let you access previously unaccessible areas. Instead, the whole world is open to you from the beginning, and you can explore wherever you like, however you like. Two people could start off in different directions and see the levels in the game in a completely different order from one another.
I've played a few of Anna Anthropy's other games, and I absolutely loved her book Rise of the Videogame Zinesters. She was on the front end of the nascent indie movement that saw its rise in the late 00s and early 10s, doing interesting and novel things with games -- more an auteur than a traditional game dev.
REDDER is the most "traditional" of the games I've played from her, but that's also something that's easier to say in hindsight. As she says on the game's page:
It really does feel ahead of its time and like it punches well above its weight. Flash games of that time period were both noteworthy and notorious for experimenting with platforming mechanics, but few of them are as polished, full-concept, and cinematic as REDDER is. It's not that the platforming is particularly unique or novel -- it's that the exploration-first gameplay of a gridded single-screen world was a genuinely underdeveloped concept at the time. I don't know if I'm even aware of any examples of games that did it before this.
By modern, 2026 standards, it feels a little bit on the simple side of things. I found myself wanting it to do more or iterate further on its concepts, but I think that's unfair given that, at the time, it was already iterating a LOT. The game is a stepping stone on a path that's now so well-trodden that it's easy to forget it's even there.
The game took me roughly an hour and a half to 100%. I ran it on my Steam Deck, which handled it perfectly once I remapped the controls. I can see myself picking it back up as a comfort playthrough every so often, as I occasionally do with VVVVVV (which is almost certainly the game I have completed the most in my lifetime).
In case anyone else is like me and absolutely adores the specific subgenre of single-screen exploration collectathon, outside of REDDER and VVVVVV, I can recommend:
If anyone is aware of any others that fit this admittedly niche genre breakdown, I would LOVE to know about them.
Another VVVVVV fan here, and I didn't know that it was inspired by another title. That's really cool.
If you've not listened to it, Souleye (who did the VVVVVV soundtrack, PPPPPP), also released a sort of remix of the original OST, called PPPPPPowerup. This isn't new by any means, but I keep both albums in my library for frequent playing.
Oh, I've played so dang many of these. They were really popular around 20 years ago in the Game Maker community.
An Untitled Story remains a favourite of mine. It's a platformer metroidvania with a focus on exploration, and occasionally requires outside of the box thinking. Somebody released an Archipelago randomizer for it which is super cool too.
There are of course the three Knytt games: Classic (which was just remastered for free), Stories (now hard to find), and Underground.
Then there's La-Mulana... you wuss.
These ones don't technically meet the requirements because they have some camera panning, but there's also Iji and Seiklus, two indie pioneers.
Treasure Adventure Game was a free title on GOG for years, which is where I first played it. I later picked up its commercial remaster, Treasure Adventure World, which unfortunately didn't do very well. In hopes of righting this wrong, I shill for it whenever the opportunity presents.
Backlog Burner Notification: IT BEGINS! Happy gaming!
(Sorry about this going up late -- was busy with Halloween last night and life stuff today)
Notification List
@BailerAppleby
@BeardyHat
@CannibalisticApple
@CompChris
@dannydotcafe
@J-Chiptunator
@JCPhoenix
@Minori
@Nihilego
@sundaybest
@Wes
@zod000
J-Chiptunator's Speedrun Backlog Bingo
★ Wildcard✅ Crankin's Time Travel Adventure
This is what I've got as my Backlog Bingo. It's not much, but I've already got the gist of one game in under 15 minutes, which bodes well considering I've only got one week to do the rest.