Sugarcane

.passage .title { display: box!important }

<html><img src="1s.png" alt="building" style="float:right; margin-left:10px"></html>As you get closer to the end of your journey you start to make out weird shapes and discolourations in the sidewalk texture. Looks like you're heading towards a suspicious brown stain.\n\nOMG I CAN'T BELIEVE I'M FALLING ON DOG POOP.\n\n[[Famous last words indeed.|Contact!]]

<html><img src="6s.png" alt="building" style="float:right; margin-left:10px"></html>It happened so many times you lost count long ago. The theme reveal, the creative block, the absurd things life threw in your way whenever you finally caught a break...\n\nIn the distance you spot two identically dressed persons reaching a crossing from opposite sides at the same time. They run into each other and disappear in a bright flash of light.\n\n[[Whoosh.|5 seconds]]

<html><img src="3s.png" alt="building" style="float:right; margin-left:10px"></html>You think back on the number of half-finished sprite sheets, the thousands of lines of spaghetti game code, the dozens of pages of story scripts and megabytes of custom sound clips and you realize with everything you created along the years and just tossed away you could have filled hundreds of game worlds.\n\nThey would have been silly and nonsensical and unplayable but maybe someone somewhere would have enjoyed them.\n\n[[Oh well, too late now.|2 seconds]]

<html><img src="7s.png" alt="building" style="float:right; margin-left:10px"></html>You watched with morbid interest as the contestants liveblogged their progress, posted build reports and discussed game design on IRC.\n\nThe blinking cursor of your text editor didn't move an inch that night.\n\nThe next day, just as you were getting ready to get some work done, your cat gave birth to her first litter and there were complications. You had to spend the day looking for a vet and caring for hungry kittens.\n\n[[The kittens didn't live long.|6 seconds]]

<html><img src="8s.png" alt="building" style="float:right; margin-left:10px"></html>The memories of anguish and creative blackout the moment the theme was revealed still sting after all these years. You can't even recall what it was, just the burning hole in your brain where your ideas were supposed to be.\n\nThe wind whispers songs of abject failure and dejection at your ears.\n\n[[It's kinda exhilarating.|7 seconds]]

<html><img src="5s.png" alt="building" style="float:right; margin-left:10px"></html>The few times you finally had something, procrastination and self-doubt would invariably set in.\n\n"What if it's...\nIt's too gay, people will hate it\nThis won't work\nYou suck at art\n"\nEven drilling a hole through your head with a power tool would have been more fun.\n\n[[Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah|4 seconds]]

<html><img src="10s.png" alt="building" style="float:right; margin-left:10px"></html>The climb was exhausting. You take a few moments to catch your breath and reconsider what you're about to do. Is there really no other way?\n\nNope. Somehow you always knew it was going to end like this.\n\n[[Jump!|9 seconds]]

<html><img src="9s.png" alt="building" style="float:right; margin-left:10px"></html>You remember the first time you found out about game jams, how they sounded like the bestest idea ever at the time. You knew how to code, you could draw stick figures like anybody else, you even didn't need to think about a theme as there was one provided for you.\n\nYou were eager to start and waited for the jam start time with trepidation.\n\nThrough one of the building windows you catch a glimpse of a red-headed dude dry-humping what looks like a Commodore 64.\n\n[[Gravity calls.|8 seconds]]\n

<html><img src="2s.png" alt="building" style="float:right; margin-left:10px"></html>You quickly wonder what your last words should be. Even though nobody will be around to hear them it feels important to at least think about something clever and appropriate. You scramble your brain cells for anything but what comes up is more white noise than articulate thoughts.\n\n[[Yeah, you really suck at this deadline thing.|1 second]]

<<playsound "splat.ogg" >>\n<html><img src="0s.png" alt="building" style="float:right; margin-left:10px"></html>You hit the ground in a mighty thump and a glorious shower of red and white pixels.\n\nA flock of improbable creatures quickly gather in circle around the brightly coloured pavement spot that was you a nanosecond ago. A huge tree loudly bemoans the waste of perfectly good fertilizer. A group of middle-aged necromancers argue about who gets first dibs on the few intact body parts. Two bearded trolls discuss whether bones are a suitable material for carving sex toys. \n\nA bird soars over the skyscraper, flies too close to the sun and plummets to the ground, a solid block of charcoal that shatters on a roof a block away.\n\nNobody cares.

10 Seconds: the Ungame

cafeine

<html><img src="4s.png" alt="building" style="float:right; margin-left:10px"></html>You remember the moments of agony watching the countdown seconds ticking away, each fading digit a needle stab at your self-confidence.\n\n[[Never again.|3 seconds]]