project day
Izzy noticed that I've been down in the dumps about not being able to work on stuff. She asked if I wanted her to start giving me space for a couple hours after I get home from work so I can have some personal project time. I said nah, that's okay, because I don't really have the mental energy and brainpower for it after a full day of work. She asked if I wanted some uninterrupted time on Saturday morning to work on stuff. I said no again, because I'd feel really guilty about doing that, because Saturday is one of the few days we can like actively do stuff together, but she insisted, so I had basically a full workday to knuckle down and work on stuff I care about.
The first thing I did was revamp my neocities page, which is something I've really been wanting to do but haven't been able to find the time. I like featherwiki, I just think it no longer makes sense for what I want my personal homepage to be. I saw a project page on another site that was just a 2-column list of links separated by year, and I realized I'd be more comfortable stealing it displaying my work in a similar fashion. I dislike meta-commentating my own work, at least in text form. I'm a lot happier to just let it speak for itself.1 It's not a complete archive yet, but it has everything from this year and recent projects I'm happy with, and the aesthetic is similar enough to the blog that it feels like they go together.
My other big project update is three new puzzles in Quest for the Radiant Cake *starring Slime & Goo!* There's one new level at the end, and two new levels inserted between earlier puzzles. With the new numbering scheme, the new puzzles are levels 9, 20 and 23. Level 9 is there to help ease the player into concepts before level 16 (which is similar but much more complicated.) Level 20 is another twist on the fusion mechanic, and 23 is another robot-centric level that revisits the multi-screen puzzle concept from what is now level 19.
🕹️ Play Quest for the Radiant Cake v. 0.23
So, I'd call project time a success. It was really nice to give my freshly-medicated brain some zero-interruption time to be creative. It doesn't seem like I did a lot, but dang, puzzles are hard. I could've made a bunch of boring ones in that amount of time, but it takes a lot of brainstorming and trial and error and tinkering to make a good one. Really grateful to Izzy for giving me what I didn't know I needed ❤️ hopefully I can make this a weekly thing.
also, having everything laid out by year makes me feel a lot better about how much I've accomplished. The endlessly self-critical part of my brain tells me I've barely done anything I'm proud of this year, and one look at my homepage gives me proof that this isn't true↩