Foreword

Hi! I can't believe I'm doing this.

I'm writing a foreword that is easily going to be longer than the actual text of the "game" I'm releasing. But I guess there's always a first for everything, so let's get on with it.

Around last year, my perspective of what my "work life" (more like work ""life"" amirite) meant to me started to shift. Don't get me wrong, I have always been a person that hates working. But how I derived meaning and self-realisation from my job fully vanished (it was already very tenuous, mind). All of this ended up seeping through in BREA🌱HE, which as I've mentioned before was a therapeutic game for me.

2023 has been not great for me (I think I've mentioned this before as well). Alongside many more things, I attempted a return to my country of birth which did eventually not happen. I can't derive any meaningful happiness from my job, which would normally be okay. But the crutch I used instead - gamedev - dried like a well in Andalusia during a heatwave in August (just like the one going on right now! LOL).

Here's a confession: In the last 3.5 months, I've started four projects. Three of which are currently on hiatus, and the fourth one being When my life beings. They are all cover similar themes and topics, and in a way, this game is like a really condensed and unpolished distillation of the other three. The sibling that managed to be born.

The Longest Way Back Home (or "The Tarot Card game" as known by my friends) is a story about the choices we make in our lives and how they inform out self-growth. It is a Narrat game, an engine that you should totally check out.

Chin Up PRINCESS or the Crown Slips is some sort of self-referential fiction but also semi-autobiographical piece (is it a game???) about capitalism and labour rights. I had to stop working on it because life happened and I haven't been able to get back to it because I wasn't in the right headspace (maybe I am now?). It is made using the spectacles engine.

Game #3 didn't even have a title. Or if it did, I can't remember. Something about "the places we call home", or something like that? It was going to be an essay about my feelings of (not-)belonging as an immigrant in neither your country of birth or the one you live in, and the dilemma of having to choose economic survival over happiness. I was going to use pictures of my hometown as little vignettes, and it'd be a binksi game, just like this one. RUINS forbade me from pulling an all-nighter to make it and I'm actually thankful for it.

Which leads us to When my life begins: the smallest in scope and effort. I wanted it to be a bit broken, so it's a poem that doesn't really rhyme in some parts. But that's okay. It's something.
It follows my current line of work: low effort games (basically because anything more complicated just gets shelved) and a bit cringe. I've joked with my friends many times that I'm currently in "my flop era", and this game is a perfect representation of it. And that's good. I know my limitations and I'm working around them. And while my latest games have been tiny and not that good, I've been participating in lots of other cool projects with lots of lovely people.

So thank you to KentuckyFriedDreams, RUINS, ellis, Ivan (and La Madriguera in general), and Eufrasio.

The next game I've participated in is going to be for the lowrezjam. It's a massive shitpost, so keep your eyes peeled for that.

I believe my burnout has disappeared, so once everything in my life settles down I'd like to finish some of the games above and maybe release something new by the end of November. We'll see.

LOL (Lots Of Love),

PRINCESS INTERNET CAFé