I’ve written a lot of reviews of video games in my life. Partly because it’s my job (though I haven’t officially written a scored game review in well over a year) but I was writing game reviews far before Ubisoft started paying me to do it.

I’ve been writing reviews ever since I played Resident Evil 4 for the first time as a freshman in high school. I took to a freshly made Tumblr blog and cranked out a few paragraphs about its well-designed combat and how the goofy dialogue works to subvert the survival horror genre.

Despite having a job where sometimes I’m able to review games, it’s always nice to have a platform to talk about them that doesn’t revolve around the stress of putting together a full-fledged, well-argued review for readers or having to deal with Ubisoft’s pay schedule.

Enter Backloggd, the website and app whose entire premise is as simple as “Letterboxd but for video games”. It’s taken over my life for the last six months.

It can be difficult to maintain a relationship with video games once they become part work, part entertainment. This change in relationship can happen to anyone who monetizes their hobbies, but Backloggd has served as a way for me to reclaim the aspects of gaming that feel overburdened with work for me.

Backloggd is a simple game review website where users create a profile and review as many games as they want. Each review is scored out of five stars, has a section for written notes, and allows users to enter which platform they played the game on, a calendar for when they played it, and if they actually finished the game or abandoned it partway through.

What’s so nice about Backloggd is that you can enter as much or as little information as you want about the games you’re reviewing. As someone who writes a lot of words about video games so I can pay my rent, my Backloggd reviews tend to be one sentence or less in an attempt to boil my critique down as much as possible. It’s a fun exercise in changing up the format for how I think about gaming discussions.

Alternatively, Backloggd is a great place for anyone looking to practice their long-form reviews. If you click on a game’s profile, you can see everything written about that game by other people. You'll find no shortage of lengthy reviews written by gaming enthusiasts looking to further the conversation surrounding a particular game. It’s a wonderful place to write reviews without worrying about what anyone else thinks.

That said, if you do care about what other people think, I’ve found the Backloggd community to be nothing but supportive and respectful of all gaming opinions. I’ve tried my hand at other gaming review sites in the past but found a lot of user reviews to be flooded with the same bad actors we’ve seen on the most popular review sites like Metacritic.

Those types of reviews certainly are present on Backloggd, which is a shame, but I’ve found that the vast majority of people looking to discuss games on the site aren’t interested in complaining about Assassin’s Creed Shadows being “woke” or not, they’re interested in talking about if it’s acceptable for Shadows to be packed to the brim with immersion-breaking bugs.

Having a positive place to discuss video games online feels like something of a rarity these days, as many of my favorite places have either been defunct or ruined by advertisers and internet trolls, for lack of a better word.

The change I’ve had in my relationship to gaming isn’t unique to people who work jobs surrounding the hobby. There are countless YouTube videos and BlueSky threads where people talk about having a difficult time with their relationship to gaming in recent years and while there are many reasons that might be, I’d suggest getting on Backloggd for anyone struggling with it.

The app is a nice reminder of why I like gaming as a communal activity. It’s great for getting my thoughts out about games in creative ways, keeping track of my gaming habits, and discussing games with a thoughtful community or like-minded gaming enthusiasts.