Is there a Goodreads for games?

If you use Goodreads, the rhythm is second nature. A book catches your eye and goes onto the Want to Read shelf. You start it and it moves to Currently Reading. You finish it, it lands on Read, you give it a star rating and maybe a couple of lines of review. And every January, the Reading Challenge quietly nudges you: 24 books this year?

Games don't have one obvious place that does all of this. People ask for it constantly — a Goodreads for games, somewhere to shelve what you want to play, log what you've finished, and watch the year add up. Here's the honest answer, and the apps that come closest.

What makes Goodreads work (and what games need)

Goodreads stuck because it nails five simple things, and a good game tracker needs the same:

Shelves — Want to Read / Currently Reading / Read. For games: a backlog, a "playing now," and a "done" pile.
A want-to list — somewhere to park things before you commit.
Ratings & reviews — quick stars, optional words.
Stats over time — what you got through, when, and how much.
A yearly challenge — a target that makes finishing feel like progress.

The closest things to a Goodreads for games

Grouvee

The most Goodreads-like of the bunch. It's built explicitly around shelves and custom collections, powered by the Giant Bomb database, so if the thing you love about Goodreads is the shelving, this is the closest match. The trade-offs: a smaller, quieter community and an interface that feels a little dated.

Backloggd

The popular pick. It's closer to Letterboxd than Goodreads in style — a grid of cover art — but it does the shelving job well, with own, playing, played and wishlist states plus tidy stats. Free, with an active community. The main limitations: it's run by one developer, so updates are slow, and the mobile app is iOS only.

HowLongToBeat

More reference tool than shelf. It's excellent for playtime data and a basic backlog with completion states, and you can import your Steam library. But the social and reviewing side is thin and the interface is dated. Most people use it alongside a proper tracker rather than as one.

The Backloggery

Old-school and simple. A long-running, no-frills way to list games and their status. There's no game-database autocomplete — you add things manually — and the design is very much from another era, but some people love how lightweight it is.

Save State

This is our own tracker, so weigh that accordingly. Save State is built around the exact shelf model Goodreads uses: Backlog, Playing and Completed, plus any custom shelves you want. Rate games, write reviews, track hours, see your yearly completion stats, and follow friends — with no ads, no paywall and no "pro" tier, on any device. The game data comes from RAWG. Try it here.

How they compare

App	Free	No ads	Shelves	Reviews	Mobile
Save State	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Grouvee	✓	✓	✓	✓	Web
Backloggd	✓	✓	✓	✓	iOS only
HowLongToBeat	✓	✗	✓	✗	Web
The Backloggery	✓	✓	✓	Limited	Web

Why books are easier to shelve than games

Goodreads has it easy: a book is "read" or it isn't. Games are fuzzier. Did you finish it at the credits, or at 100%? Is a 90-hour RPG you bounced off at hour 30 "read" or "abandoned"? And your library is scattered across Steam, PlayStation, Xbox and Switch in a way your bookshelf never is.

That ambiguity is exactly why no single app has taken over the category the way Goodreads did for books — and why the tracker you pick matters less than actually keeping it updated. Pick one that's quick enough to update that you'll actually stick with it.

The yearly challenge, for games

One of Goodreads' best tricks is the Reading Challenge — a single number that turns a vague intention into visible progress. The same works beautifully for games. Set yourself "finish 12 this year," and suddenly your backlog stops being a guilt pile and starts being a scoreboard. Save State's stats give you that running tally automatically.

(One note for book folks: if you've moved from Goodreads to StoryGraph for a cleaner, indie experience — Save State is the same idea for games. Free, no ads, no Amazon.)

What to actually do

If you want the purest Goodreads-style shelving, try Grouvee. If you want the biggest community and don't mind the Letterboxd-style layout, Backloggd is the safe pick. If you want a completely clean, no-ads experience on any device — with shelves, ratings, reviews and a yearly tally — that's what we built Save State to be.

Whichever you choose, the honest truth is the same as it is for books: the tool matters less than the habit. Pick one and actually log your games. Future you will be glad you did. And if you came to this from films rather than books, here's the same rundown for a Letterboxd for games.