I feel incredibly sad posting this and I know I'll feel even sadder after I wake up tomorrow and feel even more empty. I don't know what happened to me this LD, I always join the event and make something no matter how difficult the theme is or how pressured my time is, I even joined once 2 days before some important final exams like it was no problem. and I sure don't discriminate between themes nor would I ever quit because I didn't like a theme, I don't mind a challenge and I certainly didn't this time.

but.. just like everyone else I came up with a bunch of ideas at the start and I like one about "no space in the brain for your last 2 brain cells", a silly game made out of minigames of your last 2 braincells where you play as one of them trying to beat the other in minigames like sword fight, racing, gunfight etc all with a silly touch to them, it sounded genius in paper, and I really liked the whole thing, but once I got to work I realized that I have, for the first time since I started participating in LD bit more than I can chew..

you see, I usually spend all 3 days none stop (up to 15 hours of work per day) working on my games, it's usually a tedious and stressful process for one person to make everything from coding to design, art, music and sounds, but I always manage to power through and make it just in time. this time however I implemented a bunch of interconnected minigames which were not difficult to code on day 1, but on day 2 which is usually the art/sounds day. I realized that there is no way I can finish everything in time, I had to visit my grandma for half the day which is something I do pretty much every sunday, and have done in other jams, but this time was just different.. when I came back, I realized I have no time to finish the checklist for today, and given that I still have more coding and bug fixing to do I just decided on the hard reality that I have screwed myself from the start, I can't even remove minigames since they are in a sense connected not to mention all the coding work that I've already done.

in the end I'm not sad about quitting, it's ok to make mistakes as long as I learn something, and I totally learned things about scoping and finally got caught after getting away with big scoped games for too long, sure I accept that. what I'm sad about is my friends.. every LD event I like to check on some of my friends where we play each others games and get to hang out a little bit, and also some twitch streamers that I visit from event to event, we usually just greet each other affirming that it's been a while and I get the joy of seeing them firsthand exploring ld games including my game and falling for my funky design lol even finding bugs and exploits that I never knew existed. it's so much freaking fun! and I love it a lot, but I feel like without a game it won't really be the same, I can still hang out with friends and play their games but it feels.. empty.. I don't know it just doesn't feel right. truth be told I haven't had a single real life friend in the past 3 years and I can use all the social stimuli I can get lol, it sounds like the most pathetic excuse to be sad about missing out, but here we are ffs. I feel like shit, maybe it's just sleep deprivation or staged of grief or whatever, I'm going to bed.

To future me: never overscope again, the risks don't outweigh the rewards.