Page added: 2023/09/19
As mentioned previously, this was my high school finals project. It might look childish and amatureish, (because it is), but I spent several weeks worth of time making it. Sometimes during class, others during my freetime. I remember several sleepless nights having anxiety attacks and stressing out over if I was going to pass or not, since no matter how much I worked on the project it still looked like something out of 1998, much less 2018.
At the time I put a lot of myself into the project, which is extremely obvious. The thing is practically dripping with whatever creative fluids you'd expect from an overstressed 18 year old with burgeoning political beliefs and undiagnosed ADD looking for a fight to prove themself before an uncaring world, with nothing but their meager skills in digital art to do it with.
That is not to say that current me thinks this is all bad. I think there is a lot to envy here. 18 year old me was a lot more raw and ready to put my whole self into things compared to today, and was far more hopeful for a future of making more things like this. If nothing else, the "version 0.01" indicates that I truly believed I would make this into a full project, instead of letting it collect dust in a desktop folder for 5 years.
When I graduated, I was so overworked from school I had to take a two year sabbatical of doing absolutely nothing before even attempting to find a job, which I still haven't managed. Talking to therapists and getting some meds helped a bit.
As a young teen, my biggest dream was to become a game developper. I was always fascinated with creating worlds to explore and characters to interact with. This project shattered that dream, because it made me realize that making games is really, really, really hard. Too hard for me. That was probably for the better, because nowadays you can't go a week without hearing about another huge video game company mistreating their staff or laying a thousand people off after a major acquisition by an even bigger company.
So why did I upload this project for anyone to see? To be honest, even looking at it makes me cringe somewhat. I suppose the only reason I have to say is that you shouldn't be afraid to look back on what you've done in the past, and to actively learn from it instead. I hope putting this out there can make me realize that even though time moves on, I'm still here, making my silly little projects. And I've still got the rest of my life in front of me.