Backlog Quest — Game Backlog Tracker Spreadsheet (Excel + Google Sheets)

The Steam sale ends Sunday. By Monday there are fourteen new games in your library, and the honest total — bought, downloaded, never opened — is somewhere north of a hundred. You don't have a buying problem. You have a pile you can't see.

Backlog Quest turns the pile into numbers you can actually look at. Log your library once, and the Dashboard answers the three questions every backlog owner secretly wants answered: how many games are waiting, how many hours it would take to finish them, and what the whole pile cost you. A sample library is already loaded in the file, so you can watch it work in about thirty seconds before you type in a single title of your own.

And for the nightly scroll — twenty minutes of "what should I play?" that ends with playing nothing — there's the Backlog Picker. It rolls one game from your backlog, at random. Don't like the pick? Roll again. Sort or filter the library first if you're in the mood for something specific, and it chooses from what's left. Either way, the decision is made and you're playing.

Underneath, it's simple and sturdy. The Game Library holds up to 500 games with status, hours played, hours to beat, cost, series and your rating, and the Dashboard keeps the counts by itself. The Playing Log is a plain session diary — date, game, hours, what happened. The Wishlist watches prices the uncomplicated way: write down the price you saw and the price you'd pay, and it flags "YES — at your price" when a sale gets there. The Expenses sheet totals what gaming actually costs you across the year. And if you ever delete a formula by accident — it happens to everyone — the Formula Cheat Sheet has the important ones written out to copy back, so one bad keystroke never ruins the file.

What's inside:

• Game Library — room for 500 games, with status, hours, cost and rating

• Dashboard — backlog size, hours left to beat, completion rate, total spent

• Backlog Picker — rolls a random next game from your backlog

• Playing Log — a simple session diary

• Wishlist — flags games when they drop to your price

• Expenses — what gaming costs you, purchase by purchase

• Formula Cheat Sheet — the key formulas, written down to restore

• Start Here page and a sample library already loaded

Honest notes: it's one workbook file (.xlsx) that opens and works in both Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets — every feature works the same in both. There are no macros; every calculation is a plain formula you can see. The sample games are examples — you replace them with your own library.

Next sale, you'll know exactly what you already own — and what to play first.

— Tisdale Works