let it leave me like a long breath

working on a farming sim got me started playing stardew valley again. generally i give up around the second winter, with the Ghost Evaluation deadline looming, even though it's not actually... at all relevant. so we'll see if i stick through it.

i mean the other thing is that playing stardew valley kinda invites a direct comparison between it and the farming game i'm working on now, which, given that stardew valley had like seven years of development work + another year or so of patches, and this game has had, uh, two weeks. like, there's no way that that comparison comes out in my favor. which is fine, i mean, obviously it's not a realistic comparison, it just kinda sucks in the moment.

it's been nice working on something that is small and tightly-defined though, where i don't actually have to do all the design work to my own neurotic specification. and like, even if i wanted to do some hugely complex thing, that hugely complex thing would have a large code overlap with this small, simpler thing. i mean, plus, a game is mostly content; focusing on building the engine forever is precisely how to avoid actually making a game.