// Technology
Building QuestLog: Creating My Own Game Backlog Tracker
How a growing game library became a personal tracking app—and what I learned by building it with AI as a development partner.
My game library had reached the point where owning games and remembering them were two separate problems.
Steam sales happened. Free games got claimed. New releases joined the pile. I could usually remember the few games I was playing, but not everything I wanted to return to or why I had stopped playing something months earlier.
I wanted more than a checklist. I wanted a record of my time with games: what I owned, what I finished, what I dropped, and the notes I wanted to keep afterward.
That became QuestLog.
Where the idea started
My path into software did not begin with a clean roadmap. It began with modifying games, experimenting with computers, and trying to understand why something worked—or why it suddenly did not.
Bethesda’s Creation Kit and the Source Engine were two of my early creative tools. At the time, I was not thinking about software development. I was changing digital worlds because I wanted to see what was possible. The technical curiosity came with it.
Designing QuestLog
QuestLog needed to answer a basic question without getting in the way: what do I want to play next?
I was not trying to build another achievement feed or social network. I wanted a personal library that stayed useful as it grew. QuestLog lets players:
- Track games across five play-status categories
- Add personal ratings
- Write notes and preserve memories
- Create custom collections
- Organize games with tags
- View game information and artwork
- Import a Steam library and refresh activity data
The database work matters, but it should disappear behind the experience. The part I care about is the journal: a place where a game can keep its context after I put it down.
Building it with AI as a development partner
I used AI throughout QuestLog’s development. It helped me explore features, troubleshoot problems, understand unfamiliar concepts, improve the interface, and work through implementation details.
The useful part was speed, especially when I needed enough context to keep moving. The responsibility stayed with me. I still had to understand the problem, choose what belonged in the app, test the result, catch mistakes, and decide when a feature was useful rather than merely possible.
QuestLog taught me more than how to assemble code. I had to think about design, testing, packaging, updates, and the small decisions that turn a prototype into software I can keep using.
Lessons learned
Start small
QuestLog began as a basic tracker. That smaller version gave me something real to use and criticize. From there, it grew into a browser app and then a packaged desktop application.
Build for yourself
Because I was solving my own problem, I knew which annoyances were real. That made it easier to decide which features deserved time and which ones only added noise.
Keep adapting
The tools kept changing as I worked. Researching an unfamiliar piece, testing it, and adjusting when it did not behave as expected mattered more than memorizing one framework.
The next entry
QuestLog began with one complaint: I need a better way to track my games.
A small browser tracker grew into a desktop application I use, maintain, and continue to learn from. It also gave two long-running interests—technology and gaming—a practical place to meet.
That is the kind of project I want to keep documenting here: useful to me, a little ambitious, and honest about how much I learned while making it.