Wishlist, release days and challenges
Honest about dates
Overview
The Wishlist tab holds games you want but haven't started, each with a reminder toggle, plus a From your friends row. Upcoming games show a watcher count and a Watch for release button. On the day an announced game releases, you get an “Out today” reminder. The Events screen lists seasonal challenges, such as beating three RPGs in October, each marked upcoming, active or ended, with your progress.
~83%
of about 3,700 upcoming games had a date that was not a real day (September 2026)
~17%
had an announced day, the only ones that fire a reminder
09:00
local time, on release day
How it works
- 1
Every release date carries a precision: day, month, quarter or year. Only day-precise dates count down or fire a reminder. The rest are shown as what they are, such as “Q4 2026”.
- 2
Turning a reminder on asks for notification permission at that moment, not at launch. The phone schedules a local notification for 09:00 on release day.
- 3
On the backend, a scheduled release sweep finds games whose announced day has arrived and writes a notification for everyone watching them. It looks back a couple of days, so a missed run is caught on the next one, and a unique constraint guarantees one alert each.
- 4
Challenges are written by the team; there is no creation screen. A game counts when it is marked Completed, was finished inside the challenge's dates, and shares a genre with the challenge. Whether a challenge is upcoming, active or ended is worked out on the server.
Key decisions
Precision before the tracker
A reminder built on the raw date would have fired on a day nobody announced for about four games in five. The precision was added to the catalog before the tracker was built, not after. Building the alert first would have meant building it twice.
Challenges read the library
There is no separate streak or check-in. A finish date is the only input, so a challenge can only be completed by finishing games. A trigger keeps the finish date and the Completed status in step: moving a game to Completed sets it, moving it off clears it.
No release browse feed
The tracker is for games you watch. A date-sorted list of everything releasing soon would open on obscure titles, and nothing upcoming has ratings to rank by.