Side Quest Trackers

I’ve been procrastinating on joining Letterboxd, but I have finally signed up. I didn’t find it necessary at first since I wrote reviews for all my stuff, but now that I am no longer doing that, I decided it was time. And Bookmory for books and Backloggd for video games. That’s right, I plan to keep track of all three going forward.

Letterboxd has been out for a while, but I really didn’t see much about it until last year or maybe the year before. I see more people on it and sharing screenshots of peoples reviews. No plans here to get famous being a Letterboxd reviewer, but more of a way to archive the things I watch. Just like how Spotify has an end of the year review, being able to look back at the movies I’ve seen as well would be pleasing. Especially since for the most part, I watch them with my partner. I’ll get to reminisce on the time spent together. Plus a neat way to keep track of life since I do like to watch a bunch of movies. Booksmart is the first movie I have recorded and plan to add any more I watch going forward. I don’t think I’ll go back to add the movies I’ve already seen, that’s too much work.

Bookmory was the best app I could find for tracking books. From what I can tell it’s all for personal use, no one else will be going to my profile to see what I’ve read. That’s fine by me since I’m using it to archive what I’ve read. It also has a ton of friendly mechanics, like adding a reminder to return your book if it’s borrowed. You can also put your start and end date to see how long it took you to read the book. My favorite feature so far, is putting in what page I’m on, and it will tell me how much I’ve read so far as a percentage. Since I play a bunch of video games, seeing a progress bar pushes me to read more, making sure I hit that 100%. Convenience Store Woman has already been recorded and so far my current book, Kim Ji-young, Born 1982, is going well. I will use Goodreads to find similar books, yet will not be used to keep track of my books. I’ve seen a lot of talk on how it may be one of the longest book tracking options, they just haven’t really updated the site much and is not that user friendly. It’s good as a source to find similar books, but that’s pretty much it.

Backloggd is only a website for now and not an app. I couldn’t find a good video game tracking app so I went with this. The interface is nice and I like how I can keep track of how long it takes to play a game. So far I’ve recorded two games completed. Games like Dragon Quest will be excellent for this because I can see how long it took me to actually beat it. Yeah, the game tells me how many hours it took, but not when I first started. Technically, I did use my first achievement date as my start date, but I had to do extra work to find it. Now, I can just go to this site and see my log of games. This will be very helpful to keep track of my…back log, of games. I do have a ton of indie games I still want to play and the Yakuza series. Since I just beat Dragon Quest XI, I want to take a little break from a long time consuming game. Currently playing Another Crab’s Treasure, I wanted a Soulslike game to play. I did start Sekiro again a few weeks ago, but I’ve already beaten it and wanted something new. Black Myth: Wukong just came out, but I’ll wait for a sale or something. I’ve seen a bunch of posts and articles about one of the studio founder’s weird sexist remarks and don’t feel comfortable getting the game at full price. I know others have worked on the game as well, so it shouldn’t be overlooked altogether, but definitely not a day one purchase for me.

If I find better tracking apps/sites, I will let you guys know, or if someone knows a better option please hit me up. I’m not fully committed to the apps since I just started and don’t mind trying something new. Also, feel free to find my profiles and follow me wherever I’m at.

~ DanielShrugs ~