2023 Game Goals in Review

Posted on December 31, 2023 by Aywren

It’s that time of year again… where I look at the goals I set at the beginning of the year and see how well I worked toward meeting them. This year… well… I’ll let the results speak for themselves.

Play Switch Games

This was at the top of my list, but was actually the goal I worked on least this year. It looks like I added 17 games to my library, which felt a little high on first glance. But not if you consider I got the entire Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster for my birthday – that’s 6 games right there.

Other games of note that I picked up were:

• Super Mario Wonder
• Zelda Tears of the Kingdom
• Octopath Traveler 2
• Palia (Though I play this on PC, so this isn’t actually a game addition, just another format)
• Tactics Ogre: Reborn
• Dave the Diver
• Dredge
• Faefarm
• Persona 5 Royal
• FF Pixel Remasters (6 games)
• Dragon Quest Treasures
• Chrono Cross

Apparently, there’s one more in there I don’t recall, but those are the ones I saw when I sorted through my list. Overall, I mostly picked up the big-name games I really wanted, and mostly in physical format where I could. I did get Chrono Cross, Dave the Diver and Dredge as digitals due to gift cards.

So, anyhow, I didn’t beat any of the games I set out to in my goals this year. I added a lot of real gems to the library since. There’s a handful of games that are must-haves on my Switch wishlist – like Super Mario RPG and Star Ocean Second Story – but I feel like overall, next year will be far less in picking up titles, and only if they’re on decent sale.

Hoping that in 2024, I can make some progress on the games I have.

Steam Backlog – Get to 75% Played

Nope. I was almost there, but bundles killed my progress on this goal. I talked all about how this happened and what I plan to do about it in this post, so I won’t belabor it here.

I will note, however, I’ve been using a new site to track my backlog progress, and this is SteamCompletionist.net. I like this better than the Steam Calculator because I feel it’s more accurate. You also have control over things – such as non-game software – in your backlog that you can “blacklist” so they don’t reflect on your stats. I have several titles that are software or old duplicate games that show up in my backlog for some odd reason, and this helps me cut those out.

Utilize PC Game Pass More

I started out strong trying out Game Pass games this year - I even have a new topic page for it here. However, about partway through the year, floundered with it, and I’m not sure why.

I hung on to the subscription because there were a few games I wanted to try out that I knew were coming soon – such as Coffee Talk 2 and City Skylines 2. But when I finished Coffee Talk 2, City Skylines failed to keep my attention, and my Steam backlog blew up the way it did this year, I decided it was time to unsub from Game Pass, for now.

I might come back to it in the future as I really do like the concept and the library there. I just have too many other games that need my attention. Frankly, having another list of games to play, even if they were at a low-price sub, was adding to the backlog pressure.

So, I’ve put that away for now.

As for reaching my goal for this year, I’ll say I did fair at it. I did explore games using the service (I discovered Turnip Boy!). I did try out City Skylines 2, and determined it wasn’t an early purchase for me. So, in the long run, it still saved me some money this year.

Spend Less on Gaming

Hmm... yes and no. I bought more games than I should have, but they were super cheap games in bundles. So, I got good games at a great price. I don’t know how that hashes out.

I also spent less money in the FFXIV cash shop this year. I did pay for another character switch-around, but aside from that, I don’t recall any really big purchases. Since they changed the cash shop to not allow for gifted codes for most items, I don’t really throw any giveaways anymore.

So yeah. I think I partially did this. But I’d like to spend even less next year!

More Gaming Blogging & Blog Cleanup

This was a goal I can say I did well with this year. Obviously, I finished my blog cleanup, as I talked about here, and expanded it quite a bit this year.

I’m not sure that I did “more gaming blogging” but I did enough that I’m content with it. Next year, though, I want to push this further, as I work through my backlog. We’ll see how well I do with that – but this is not about next year’s goals, right?

So, I’ll say, yes. I did well with this goal and I’m pleased overall with how my blog turned out this year.

The verdict for this year: Didn’t do as well as I might have liked on some of the goals. But I’m positioning myself to do better for next year.

Overall, though, I had fun discovering games that I had no idea I’d be enjoying or taking inspiration from this year – things like American Truck Simulator and Idle Champions. I think the fun is the most important takeaway of all this, so I’m not going to sweat the goals too much.

How did you do this year? Did you have any goals set, and if so, are you happy with the outcome?

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