Weekly Wisby 15: Free Game Click Here NO VIRUS!!!


This blog is 2 weeks late. It’s funny… last blog I was talking about how I had it all together… and then 1 day later, on Monday, something tipped me over the edge. Let’s talk about it.

P.S. if you’re not here for the sap then skip the entirety of the next part, the ending is much more fun!



There were a couple of difficulties plaguing the writing of this post. First of all… up until now I couldn’t see it without making it personal. Second was that the conflict kindof drained my energy. And third is an overabundance of stress. My shoulders felt heavy every time I thought about person… let’s call them Star to make things easier… and on top of that Holland is getting affected by corona more and more. Sad, especially because it seems impossible for me to continue my studies here in Sweden… meaning I would have to go back. The idea alone of going back to anything that feels like quarantine, well let’s just say I did NOT expect it to hit me as hard as it did.

Anyway: Monday.

The story actually starts 2 weeks before it. Without stagnating on the details, I took initiative on something they didn’t agree with and we had a fight about it, but after talking things out and solving the problem we seemed to be fine.

Then on Monday me and this person were walking home together. We talked a bunch about stuff and felt there was no bad blood between us. However, after we reached my house, I hugged Star goodbye, as I usually do with my friends. And before I could leave properly, they addressed that “things were not gonna be the same as they were”. It confused me, so I asked what they meant, to which they responded that “I still blamed them for what happened”. Which I didn’t. But when I tried to convey that, they just responded with “yes you did”. It quickly turned into arguing, and eventually escalated into me responding with “fine I blame you for everything!” and storming off.

What I want to talk about is dealing with that. This blog is, after all, supposed for me to reflect about myself. I feel it would also be in pretty bad taste to leave it here and move on with “I’m right they’re wrong” since that’s not reflecting, that’s just ranting.

Whenever there’s a conflict going on, I hold myself to 1 very simple golden rule: either we’re all wrong or none of us are. Conflicts usually arise from good intentions, and blaming someone with good intentions just turns people apathetic… if you’re lucky. I prefer the “everyone is wrong”-ending since everyone takes blame, but until you get there I consider “nobody is wrong” meaning that nobody is to blame.

That word, blame… taking blame: power move. Giving blame: don’t. Not once have I seen the act of giving blame being helpful to anyone. And, of course, Star claiming I was blaming them for what happened… felt… frustrating. It confused me… I felt like, indirectly, Star was claiming I broke my golden rule. My response didn’t even mean anything, I just needed to get out of there… it was just stupid.

And then comes the doubt. Doubting if I could have handled it better (I could), doubt if Star is right about me (unimportant), and for a whole week with ev-ery-thing-I-did doubting if Star would judge me on it if they were here.

And MAN is it tiresome. Tiresome and stressful. Not to mention stupid. Now to be fair… there is reason to believe Star can hold a grudge… obviously, since they waited a week and a half to tell me “I still blame them”. But even then, you’ve gotta trust that they forgot about it 2 minutes after it happened. Not because they don’t care, but because it doesn’t matter what they think: it’s not gonna change what they’re thinking.

All this to say, it’s easy to react when hindsight is 20/20. Moreso I’m probably wrong about my assumptions and should ask someone more qualified than me about what they think of dealing with these kinds of blows in a healthy manner. Plus, sorry for dragging you into my drama, teach you a lesson you may have learned already, then immediately undermining it. It’s not what I usually do on this blog, it’s just kinda what I needed right now and… almost… the only thing that happened this week...



With everything going on, I needed a win. So Julius and I, together with 2 other students Vlada and Timon, joined the Uppsala ChillJam! And I’m so proud of the game we created!

Now for those who don’t know, a Jam is a short period of time in which you make a game based on a theme. This Jam was 48 hours, and the team was “New Year’s Resolutions”. However, before the Jam started, we had kindof already decided on our own theme: snow sailing.



We really wanted a game where you swayed and swerved on a snowboat through a blizzard. Our connection to the theme was that you have to bring 3 gods together on New Years Eve so you get granted a wish, that you then use to make the blizzard come to an end. Pretty shallow… but we were off to the races!

We really worked non-stop. Julius kept the team on track whilst helping out where needed, Vlada made excellent 2D artwork, Timon created the 3D models, and I programmed some of the worst code in my life at an insane speed to make it all come together!


Look how cool it looks!

If you wanna play it for yourself, you can find it on https://casey-hofland.itch.io/the-legend-of-the-new-years-wish. It takes 15 minutes to finish, max, and you’ll be yourself a snow-sailing-experience richer. Personally, I think we’ve proven that a similar game has a lot of potential. It feels GOOD to sail in the snow through a blizzard! It feels GOOD to get some airtime with the boat! It feels GOOD to fly yourself off into space because the code for this was quickly scrambled together! … ignore that last part. But yes… you can fly with this boat. Let me know if you were able to do it!

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