From Twelve

There was a time when nothing really mattered. I was reminded of those times recently by a friend request I received on Discord from a friend I had, once, in middle school:

No bell was rung when I sent that “ok” text to tell me that I’d be talking to M---- for the last time.¹ And yet, it was the last message. It was sent carelessly—nothing really mattered. I was looking at this chat just now, reminiscing, when I decided to scroll up and found a link that brought tears to my eyes: https://play.unity.com/en/games/d91da6c7-7561-435e-895e-2ec50df2a600/flier

My game. Flier. I made it when I was twelve—it was the first game I had built all by myself, at the height of the pandemic, at a time when I had few friends.² Back then it was almost like the code was my only friend… I had lost this game (all of its files, even my memories of it!) over the course of the years. And here it is:

It’s beautiful, though there are quirks and rough edges in the game. The plane explodes when it hits any cloud:

And you can cancel horizontal lane changes, but not vertical ones. The music is weird. The “Next” button is actually a “Play again” button (though you wouldn’t know); the contrast of the score display isn’t good enough, the plane doesn’t disappear when it explodes… Had I made it today, I would never call this game finished.

But I’ve played this game for over an hour today:

And, I don’t know, I’m smiling. I’m in college, I did all of high school, I stopped writing code,³ I worked at the fighter jet company; I learned and unlearned Blender, Unity, and C# (the tools I used to make this game). I think 12-year-old me made a better fighter jet than I could now.

It’s been a while, huh?

Five years from now, will I look back this fondly at what I do today?