A backlog is a queue, not an accusation
Anyone who has been gaming for a few years has a library of hundreds of titles, most of which were never opened. NextWish splits that into three states that actually exist: QUEUED (bought it, want to play), IN PROGRESS (I am in the middle of it) and ARCHIVED (finished, and here is the rating).
The middle state is what changes how the app feels. A sixty-hour game sits in progress for months, and while it does not leave the queue the whole list reads like a debt. Marked as started, it drops out of the to-do pile and becomes what it is: the thing you are playing right now.
Finishing does not erase anything: the title moves to the archive with its date and rating, and keeps counting toward achievements and recommendations. Replaying is not a problem either: starting again writes a new date without removing the game from your collection.
Importing your Steam library without typing anything
Typing in three hundred games by hand is why almost nobody finishes building a backlog. Connect your Steam account and the app reads your library, then you pick what to bring over: it is not all or nothing, and nothing is published without you asking.
The import runs in the background, on the server. You can close the app: when it finishes, you get a notification. A large library takes a few minutes, and progress is saved in batches, so a dropped connection resumes where it stopped instead of starting over.
Once connected, the account keeps being useful: every so often the app compares your playtime against the last visit and marks whatever moved as "playing". Anything untouched for over a week drops off that list on its own, because a game abandoned halfway is still unfinished, but it is no longer what you are playing.
One honest limit: Steam has to have game details set to public, otherwise it returns an empty library. The app says so when that happens, with the path to change the setting, instead of showing a blank list with no explanation.
Price, release date and the two things the app watches for you
A queued game with a price gets its discount watched. When the discount GOES UP, the app tells you, with the price in your country's currency. It is not an alert you configure per title: adding it to the queue is the request, and the rest happens on its own.
The notice is about the discount increasing, not about "it's on sale": a game that sits at 20% off for weeks does not become a daily notification. What matters is the change, and the change is what fires.
Releases work on the same logic. Anything unreleased carries its date, that date is re-checked against the source more often as the day approaches, and the notice goes out when the game lands. An announcement with no firm date, the classic "planned release: 2026", is re-checked until a date exists, and if that date turns out to have already passed the notice still goes out.
The game catalog comes from IGDB, which covers every platform rather than just Steam: console exclusives and indies outside the store show up in search all the same. Price is what depends on the store, so a game that is not on Steam is added without a price rather than with a wrong one.
Deciding what to play together, without a poll in the group chat
Picking a game for four people is the social problem of multiplayer, and it almost always ends as a list in a group chat that nobody reads to the end. NextWish has groups: everyone suggests titles, everyone marks what they want, and the list sorts itself by how many people said yes.
First place is what the group is closest to agreeing on, and it gets the spotlight on screen, with the faces of who voted and how well it matches the whole group's taste. A vote can change at any time: it is not a poll with a deadline, it is a queue that reorders itself.
When the choice happens, you can set the date right there and the group gets the invitation. After playing, each person rates it and writes what they thought, and the item becomes group history with everyone's average.
A game you saw in the group's list and want for yourself goes into your personal queue from the item's own card, without going through a recommendation. The two lists are separate on purpose: what the group wants to play together and what you want to play are not the same thing.