We’ve been working on Flatlanders for 4 years. It’s been consuming almost every day of my life since May of 2022 and has gone through the phases of being an experiment, then a project, a love, an obsession, an addiction, and finally a problem… I work on the game as much as my body allows, dream about it, have nightmares about it. I love it, it’s a mess, it’s my daily hell and I can’t escape from it. It’s everything to me while being a total meal replacement for the fare of a healthy person’s life. I’m feeling incredibly nostalgic lately because the people I knew, the places I went, the way I felt when I could think about or work on anything else- it all lies years in the past.
This isn’t a post about Flatlanders. At least not so much outside of clearing up that it still exists and is very far in development… I have wanted to write a good long post about it, something positive about the experience and maybe getting into the technical stuff a bit. I’ve written half of that post a dozen times over the past few years, but no matter what I come up with my soul writhes. It cries for me to stop trying to paint this in a positive light, to stop advertising the product of my festering wound of a life like it’s a magic elixir.
I don’t want the future to happen, whether it’s good or bad. I’m afraid of anything more happening and even when I think back to good things there is a sort of retrospective fear towards them, like the past is just a series of narrowly avoided head on collisions. When I think about working on Duck Game, actually finishing and releasing Flatlanders, making music and experimenting with VST plugins, talking to people and getting back in touch or taking any other steps towards an assumed existence… It really freaks me out to imagine a future where I’m actually doing this stuff. Simple everyday tasks feel like embarking on an interstellar trip. I need to go to the store and get eggs just to prove that I still can.
The past in my mind has become such a corrupted place. The good moments have all focused themselves into single intense points- a computer desktop, the feeling of the sun or the look on someone’s face. Old friends, people, and things that used to exist. Sitting on the floor in the sun from an infinite cloudy sky, the Sega Saturn on the brilliant green carpet against the warm wood of the TV. The bad moments have grown into an encompassing reality, dull broad blobs consisting of accidents and mistakes, pain, the things people do, the things I do. The world. The things that keep happening. Things that seem more likely than a good day, a good person, or a good game.
When I try to work my soul screams at me in anger, like I haven’t done whatever it is that we where supposed to be doing. Like I’ve been putting it off for too long. Life is short when we go through the same motions over and over, the time spent in the repetition of things erases itself. My soul has lost respect for my mind, it realizes that time is accelerating and I’m never going to give it the future that we’d hoped for. Growing older isn’t what we expected because we always thought that we would be there. How is it that you don’t get to come along on a trip through your own life?
I’m afraid to be myself because I don’t want to water down the beautiful past with new memories of my tired present. The past is my muse and I need to remember it in the best way possible because I can’t live without its light. I wanted to make people happy, to tell a good story, to have things move forward without issue so I could look back and say that it went great and that nobody got hurt. Naivety is a beautiful gift, it makes it easier to pretend that things are going well. It helps us keep all the wires and motors on the inside, to keep the battery door on, keep the nasty chicken paste neatly inside the nugget’s crust. Pretending to be alright works well if you can do it with a little bit of honesty, you let out just enough so that others can see what you’re trying to do. You communicate a bit of the stuff you’re working through like an engine that’s beginning to struggle, so people know when it’s time to go easy on the accelerator. When we let the belt slip a little it’s a reminder that we all have limits, and working within limits is the only way we can make decisions that work within our principles and anxieties while still being helpful.
But I lie, I lie, I run and run till I sputter and die. I know something isn’t right but still say I can make the trip because I really want to make it and I don’t know what else to do. The only power I’ve gained in adulthood is the ability to run on less cylinders, to bang on forward and hope that time will slow down and make less demands so I can take in the view for a moment and cool down. But it doesn’t slow down… especially not as you get older, as anyone who is older will repeat to you again and again because of how profound it is to watch time go by.
It’s been a long and lucky trip getting here, but I don’t have the energy to make that trip again. I don’t love today. I don’t want to take a class, to go out and party, to see a landmark somewhere or learn another language. I don’t want to watch TikTok or ask Chat GPT. I don’t want to be a rockstar, a pilot, an astronaut.
I want to be in front of dad’s computer, with the winter sun shining onto the green carpet through the living room window. With Game Maker and a folder full of Midis, the universe could cut away everything outside those walls and run comfortably on a Pentium II. If I could bring anything it would be memories of the people I love and an Age Factory CD. I’d put it in and let it all fade out like a movie that ends where it began.
I got blue in the sky
I got blue in the sky
I got blue in my mind
I got blue in my mind
海に星が燃える
-Umi Ni Hoshi Ga Moeru, Age Factory