By Nelson Schneider - 01/04/26 at 02:54 PM CT
The results of the last year’s New Year’s Backlog Ablutions are in! While it came down to the wire, with Erstwhile Matt submitting his third and final review within 24 hours of the final deadline, all of us succeeded at wiping away our obligations to our bloated backlogs for 2025.
That means we’ve got a new winning streak started, so we’ll have to see if we can keep it going in 2026! Since nobody lost and everybody won, no Penalty Games were purchased, and since no Penalty Games were in the mix, we all got to choose all of the games we plan to tackle in 2026.
To reiterate the rules: We all have one year to play three specific backlogged games that we’ve chosen for ourselves in advance. Included within those three games must be whatever we received from failing competitors from the previous year. We must be ‘done’ with these games – as in, not planning to play them anymore, as neither finishing a game that turns out to be terrible nor getting 100% completion or achievements are part of the bargain – and submit reviews to MeltedJoystick for each by midnight on December 31, 2026. DLC Expansions are not qualifying picks, and competitors can’t “continue” a game from the preceding year.
The penalty for failure: Any losers will buy a wishlisted game for each winner. If everyone wins, no Penalty Games will change hands. If everyone fails, no Penalty Games will change hands.
Let’s see what we’re playing!
Chris: Community Manager
Chris will be indulging his disturbing obsession with terrible horror games. But he’s also excited to play “Greedfall” based solely on my own rave review of it. So maybe there’s hope for him.
“Mouthwashing”
“Kentucky Route Zero”
“Greedfall”
Matt: Erstwhile Photo/Video-grapher and Pumpkin-Poop Emoji
The instigator of this annual challenge amongst the MJ Crew continues his fixation on big, content-rich Sandbox games that he desperately wants to play, but wouldn’t be able to find the time or motivation for without monetary stakes on the line. He also will continue his fixation on proving that his corrupted memories of the RTS genre aren’t actually false and that there must be a good one out there, somewhere.
“Immortals: Fenyx Rising”
“The Cave”
“Mushroom Wars”
Nelson: Editor
I probably wouldn’t ever find the motivation and inspiration to sit through another Sony Sinematic Slop game, so I put the 2018 “God of War” on my list for this year. I bought a first-party Nintendo Switch game... without realizing it’s not a sequel, but a port of a Game Boy Advance game, so I figure I should force my way through that. And I decided to throw a critically acclaimed Indie game in there, since I don’t have enough “A,” “AA,” or “AAA” games backlogged to fill out the triad. (Yes, 99% of my backlog is Indie stuff - ‘support the developers,’ they said.)
“Dad of Boy” (the ‘God of War’ reboot)
“Mario vs. Donkey Kong” (Switch)
“Spiritfarer”
Nick: Chief Technical Officer
Nick wanted to play a puzzle game, and since he loved “Bridge Constructor: Portal,” he chose “Poly Bridge.” He also decided it’s high time he sees what the fuss is about ‘The Witcher’ games, so I told him to start with the first one. Lastly, noticing that the only thing that really got him fired up regarding gaming in 2025 was old-ass NES titles, and further noticing that he thought one of the worst ‘Final Fantasy’ games was almost perfect, I told him he should play the best RPG on the NES and remove some of his ignorance.
“Poly Bridge”
“The Witcher”
“Dragon Warrior (Quest) 4” (NES)
