Tag: memories

The way I learned programming in middle school was by making games in Flash. I built a bunch of different games and shared them with my friends and classmates. There was even one game that got some fame on the local Internet and saw hundreds of players.

But when programming became my job, all the fun and games disappeared out of it. Instead of making games, I only coded for work. I just played games, made by other people – to distract myself from the horrors of reality.

But the love for making games still stayed somewhere inside me. The dream. Of making my own game that becomes big. And the feeling you get when others get joy out of your creations.

So after a couple of decades of only boring business programming, I’ve now gotten back to game development as a hobby. I’ve been at it for a while. And…

I finally released the first real video game I made. Here it is:
Quintillion Quest

I was inspired to build it after playing Orb of Creation like 4 years ago. That game was such an amazing dopamine generator that I wanted to recreate it with my own personal style. It sure took a while to get to this point where I am now done with it and people are playing it.

My favorite games to play are those that have a steep learning curve, complicated mechanics, lots of strategy and thinking, like Path of Exile, Magic the Gathering, etc. So of course I made my own game’s learning curve also maybe a bit too high.

Lots of people who have played it have not gotten through the initial challenges, and I’ve had to give out hints, and am a bit regretting at the moment that I made the start of the game so hard. But I also like to think that the initial difficulty acts as a quick filter to drop out people who wouldn’t like the game anyway – because as the game continues, you still really have to min max your decisions and actions, until finally in the end it gets easier.

People who have gotten through the initial learning curve have at least in general liked my game, told me it is addicting and fun. That’s what I was going for and it really makes me happy. One of my acquaintances even completed nearly all the achievements in the game – I feel quite honored that my handiwork enabled others to get loads of dopamine. As those dopamine highs are what I live for myself.

At some point during the whole process, I got a lot of stickers printed out with the game’s logo on it. I handed a bunch of those stickers out, and stuck a bunch of them to random sticker display locations all over the town.

It reminded me – I used to do the same for this blog, like 20 years ago – stick a bunch of stickers with furamo.com on it all over. Some people who used to frequent this blog back then actually found it from those stickers. I think nowadays the whole sticker business is much more popular, so if I stick mine next to 30 others, it kinda gets lost in the noise. And it won’t bring that many new people in anymore.

But I still like them. The stickers. I have a few hundred of them left for the game. Wanna help me out stick them to things? If so, ask me to give you some when you see me, I always carry a few in my wallet.

I randomly remembered I had a specific song as my phone’s ringtone like 15 years ago. The memory made me nostalgic, made me miss that song, and I wanted to set it as my ringtone again.

I didn’t remember much about the song. But after feeding a bunch of vague memories I had of it to ChatGPT, it managed to find me a trail that led to the correct YouTube video.

One of the top comments on that video is:

Imagine seeing a grown man wearing a black suit with a serious face entering the bus and then his phone rings and you hear this

I wondered – did the person who wrote that comment see me on a bus years ago? Or was that song that popular as a ringtone?

Anyway, now it’s my ringtone again. You are welcome to give me a phone call, so I can listen to it.

I was out with some friends and we were discussing what kinds of beer cocktails there are.

My first idea was the classic Submarine cocktail – having a shot of Jägermeister submerged upside down at the bottom of your beer glass. I used to have these decades ago at my regular bar.

Apparently there are more cocktails that you can make with beer, but the alluring idea of a Submarine swam around in the air and we were googling around how to make it.

At first we didn’t have a clue – how to get the shot of Jägermeister at the bottom of the beer glass without spilling any of it.

But eventually one of us – who also happened to be a professional barman – found the how-to instructions for this marvelous abomination.

So we went to the service personnel of the establishment to order one.

Apparently the art of making a Submarine is lost in time, only to be found in ancient tomes. Just as our barman initially couldn’t concoct one, neither could the officials of the premise.

So our own barman, albeit on his day off bartending, took the matter to his own hands and assembled a Submarine, teaching the young’uns while doing it.

It was finally there with us. The Submarine.

And I started to sip on it.

At first the only thing my tastebuds sensed was the cheap flavour of the cheapest beer we used in making it.

But eventually the shot glass at the bottom of the beer glass tipped over, and my drink slowly bled brown.

And the taste transformed from one of shabby beer to that of serious booze.

It was marvelous.

Got any tasty recipes we could cook the next time? Let me know in the comments.

I went to a friend’s birthday party yesterday. He lives in the Russian district of the city, close to where I used to live in high school, so it was kinda nostalgic to walk around there.

He has a small, super friendly dog. The dog was really interested in my beer and constantly tried to sniff it and lick it. Later, someone actually gave the dog a drop of beer and after that it lost its interest in mine. I guess he didn’t like the taste, just the smell.

We played board games and video games, hours passed. I got way too drunk and lost control over what I was saying, telling some pretty cringe stories. At some point, me and another dude at the party left for another event – a night time gaming convention nearby.

The gaming convention was fun as hell. There was so much stuff to do and see there. I was really drawn to the stand that sold anime merchandise – a highlight for me that they had was a hand painted picture of Marin Kitagawa.

People always tell me when they visit my place that my walls are so empty – that I should put some pictures up. I thought about buying the waifu picture at the stand for decorating my home, but ended up not getting it.

They also had a bunch of figurines for sale – the most interesting ones being those of Rem, who is particularly relevant at the moment since the show she is from is currently airing another season. And she’s also a character in the mobile game I play daily.

The only souvenir I got in the end from that stand was a Bocchi keychain.

The event had many arcade machines, pc-s and consoles around for playing. Me and a friend played a few games of Dr Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine, which has been my favorite game ever since I played it for the first time in 2004, on my Nokia N-Gage with an emulator.

While playing that game there, I started at difficulty 5 and my friend at difficulty 1. I was too drunk for the speed and concentration it required and lost. So I kept reducing the difficulty each game, and finally won when we were playing on the same level. Later we came back to that machine, I was more sober, kept increasing the difficulty and managed to win up to difficulty 4. It was quite an experience, playing my favorite game for the first time on an arcade-like machine.

The event also had a cosplay competition. There were various cosplays from Genshin Impact and some other IP-s I don’t care about. And the highlight for me – a cosplay of OMGkawaiiAngel from Needy Streamer Overload. I loved that game – its protag is a girl with severe mental illness and personality disorders and drug addiction and you gotta manage her mental state to get through the game. All of which is relatable to me.

That cosplay was well executed. When the cosplayer stumbled on stage, it actually seemed in character, which was cute. I voted for her in the competition. But I wasn’t there when the competition results were announced so I still don’t know who won it.

Around the time I was in university I used to hang around with people every single day. I had energy to go to multiple social events in one night. Nowadays I meet people like once a month at best. But the amount of stuff experienced yesterday almost made me feel young again.

So. Have any suggestions what picture I should put up on my living room wall instead? Leave a comment if you do.

The Tale of the Bulky Buckets

I was out shopping for a bucket of cream, because winter makes my skin dry.

So, at the pharmacy, I found a bucket similar to the one I had emptied just before, but the new one felt way smaller. I asked one of the employees if they had any buckets of more significant size for my significant moisturizing needs, but got told that the bucket in my hands was the biggest ol’ bucket of cream that they had. So I bought it.

After I got back home and looked at both of the buckets next to each other, I realized they had exactly the same volume and weight. It was just the shape of the bucket that had changed. Geometry sure is weird sometimes.

Old bucket on the left – New on the right

The Tale of Sweltering Heat

A friend of mine was having a birthday party. I was there too. He ordered some food. The food arrived. The first hungry guy ate some, and instantly ran to the kitchen to try and douse the fire in his mouth. It turned out, the food had been seasoned with Carolina Reaper, which was until recently the hottest pepper in the world. I decided to skip that food and watched the others eat it.

A few days later, I asked my friend how his anus had been doing the day after the remarkable meal. He only replied with this image:

The Tale of Bygone Passages

Facebook discontinued the Lite Messenger app that I had been using, so I was forced to download the full version. It has been advertising me people who I haven’t talked to for 10-20 years. So, since it was already showing me these weird people from the past, I messaged many of them.

It turns out some people are happy talking to you after 20 years. Like one of them that I last spoke to when we were in middle school together. But some others have moved on with their lives so much, that they just aren’t interested in chatting anymore.

When I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to appreciate people and events from the past more and more. The older the thing, the more I’m lovin it. So – chatting with these people feels really nostalgic, interesting and enjoyable, even with the ones who themselves are not that interested in the conversation. But I seriously am grateful for those who – after all these years – are writing to me in a way that makes me feel like no time has passed at all and we’re still the friends we used to be.

Haven’t talked to me for a decade or two? Comment below how you have been doing.