Furamo

stories about this and that

Today is the 22th birthday of Furamo, this blog.

I used to hold parties to celebrate its birthday years ago, but not anymore. So, to still do something for it, I’ll give an overview of what has been going on for both Furamo and Me that I haven’t mentioned here yet.

Furamo:

• Nothing much. I used to hold quizzes on its birthday, where I would show people random blog posts and they had to guess on what date it was written. That was a nice tradition. It is now dead, but my love for quizzes in general has only grown since then.

Me:

• I haven’t really been learning Japanese anymore. For like half a year already. It used to be a cool regular educational hobby. But haven’t been feeling like doing it. It’s fine probably, I’ve been studying it on and off since high school. So I’ll get back to it when it is the right time.
  Fun fact, I won the local Linguistics Olympiad in high school, because they had a few Japanese questions in it and I guess they didn’t expect competitors to know basic Japanese.
• But instead of learning Japanese I’m slowly learning to draw. Both because I want to draw the art myself for the next video game I am making, and because I just have always been fascinated by drawing, or art in general, and I want my skills to match my vision.
• The first video game I made, Quintillion Quest, didn’t make much money. I lost a few thousand euros total by making it. And its reviews are kinda mixed. Because I made it too hard and confusing, inspired by the hard and confusing games that I play myself. You really need to read guides to get anywhere in my game. I did write some guides for it. But there are no guides in Chinese and Japanese, so the players from these countries don’t really get my game and leave a negative review.
• I’m going to Tartu at the end of the next week for a few days. If you know me, live there, and wanna hang out – let me know.

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’ve been back on dating apps for a while.

Last time I was serious about those was like 10 years ago and I had absolutely no trouble whatsoever getting a new girlfriend after meeting like 2 different people. So all those 10 years I always thought – whenever I feel like I am ready, I can just get a new relationship just like that and it will be easy.

But I was wrong.

I’m kind of a niche product, you see.

There aren’t that many people whose requirements for a partner mash well with mine.

So I’ve just been swiping, left and right, and been to dates with like 3 people so far, but haven’t found anything that would satisfy the both of us.

Somehow, after all the failures I’ve had on this run, I still think I’m pretty awesome sometimes and it will just take a bit of time before it will all work out again and I won’t be alone anymore.

Why am I even doing this? I don’t know.

At the end of the last year I took 3 months off work, to get some rest and to work on completing the video game I am making. And somehow cutting out work left me with enough free time and open space in my life that I wanted to fill it with something. Maybe.

Anyway, I think I’m not gonna go into too many details about other people in my blog, but I’ll be sure to keep you updated in case there are any interesting developments.

My friend mentioned that someone he knows had their kid run around so awfully carelessly, with their mouth open, that the kid ended up with a door handle up their throat. Had to get lots of internal stitches and shit.

I thought – yeaah… Kids sure are stupid. They’re not really aware of the consequences of their actions.

But then I also realized – adults are just as stupid, just in different ways. And keep injuring themselves and those around them in their stupidity.

Like me. I don’t run around with my mouth open, but my mouth is a problem regardless.

And I end up with a door handle up my throat.

Not physically, but metaphorically.

I keep getting a door handle stuck up my throat and requiring stitches in my relationships.

But it’s okay, I’m kinda used to it.

Have you, my dear reader, injured yourself or someone you love recently because you are too dumb?

Yes?

Don’t worry, that’s normal. Just be sure to take / give some Ibuprofen, that’ll make it hurt less.

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.