GameRoll: Game Backlog Tracker

Stop just logging your backlog. Start sharing it.

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Inspiration

I've always been a hardcore gamer — or, well, I was, before two toddlers showed up and hijacked my free time. Back in my final year of my degree(like 13 years ago lol), I built eSquad, a social network idea for competitive gamers to find teammates for CS, Dota, LoL, that kind of thing. It never went anywhere, just sat there as a finished degree project gathering dust. So when Lewis's Shipaton video was the first thing that popped up in my feed, it felt like a sign. Seeing that video brought all of it back, and I thought: let's actually do this one properly, now that I know a lot more than I did back then.

What it does

GameRoll is a social network built around your gaming backlog. You save games, play them, finish them, and share the journey with your friends.

  • My Roll: your pending and playing games. Spin it when you can't decide what to play. See a game on TikTok, Instagram, X, YouTube or Facebook? Share the post to GameRoll and it finds the game for you.
  • Discover: personal recommendations, what's hot this week, top rated, new and upcoming releases, and a search over hundreds of thousands of games.
  • Game pages: all the info about a game, plus a lobby for threads and debates, and reviews from other players. Finishing a game means leaving a quick review: rating, hours and platform.
  • Social: chat with friends, join communities, climb the weekly, monthly and yearly rankings, and post Pings (story-style updates) in the Radar feed.
  • Compare with a friend: a "Wrapped" for two players. Genre radar, shared platforms, hours played, games in common and a compatibility score you can share as an image.
  • Profile: your medals, stats and collections.

It's available in 26 languages, and posts from other users can be translated with AI on demand.

How I built it

Flutter for the app, one codebase for iOS and Android. Firebase Cloud Functions for the backend and Firebase Data Connect on Postgres for the data, with a daily job that keeps the catalog in sync with IGDB. Subscriptions and avatar frames run on RevenueCat. Solo project, started August 1st.

Challenges I ran into

Instagram doesn't have a public API for reading what's in a post, so I had to find an unofficial one. The other headache was indie games that were already on Steam but not yet on IGDB. Now I save a Steam placeholder and check every day until IGDB catches up.

What I learned

Building apps is my day job, so Flutter wasn't new. Keeping my own database in sync with something as big as IGDB, without hitting their rate limits, was. Promoting the app on TikTok and Instagram was brand new territory too, and I'm still learning how to reach a wider audience.

What's next for GameRoll

Steam library import is next, then Xbox. After that: game tiers, a recently-played view, offline mode and a lot of smaller things I keep noticing while I use the app every day.

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