The Project
The Game Backlog Assistant is an open source Python tool I built to be a digital library for gamers. It automatically pulls data (playtime, genres, platforms, pricing, etc.) from APIs and syncs it into a Notion database for easy access.
What I Did & Creative Approach
I handled all the code and documentation. My creative focus was around user centric design. The main challenge was formatting my code to be readable and usable by others. I used the IGDB, Steam, and HowLongToBeat APIs, working around their inconsistent search queries with clever parsing and fallback logic. I also uploaded everything to GitHub, where users gave feedback and requests, which I implemented.
What I Learned
This was a crash course in API integration, debugging, and community support. I learned how to document code for others and how to adapt to weird API quirks. Compared to game dev, it was slower-paced but taught me a lot about software reliability and reproducibility.
Why I did this project
I view playing games as both a fun and creative exercise. I made this project to help me move from consuming games to analyzing them. This tool helps to catalog my thoughts on the games, organizing my thoughts on what mechanics and design choices worked and what didn’t. It also encouraged and allowed me to explore new genres and types of games that I might have otherwise missed, expanding the library of games that I can draw from when designing games.