But presumably you don’t just stare at the wall. “Humans need something to do” is mainly bound to not just sitting around twiddling your thumbs. It’s the reason we get bored, the brain is annoyed at not having anything to focus on.

It doesn’t have to be literal work, just something you find engaging, be it going for a run, tending to houseplants, or completing your entire video game backlog.

And of course there is variation between humans. Some people cope well with having little to do, others always need to do something they find productive.

“boomer” as a term is here to stay and a moving target

Kind of like how “Millennial” for a while meant ‘teenager’ despite the oldest Millennial being 40.

GameMaker is also a very capable 2D engine that you can use for free until you want to export, by which time you can get a subscription less than a cup of coffee.

Plenty of other engines beyond unity, no matter the game you want to make.

Icelandic would like a red-headed word.

I personally am a fan of jet-lagged, the game. Sam, Ben, and Adam from wendover productions/Half as interesting compete in various travel-based games across the world.

I’m going to give you the advice I usually give new Gamemaker users who come to the engine expecting to make their dream game in a week but quickly realize that isn’t happening. You’ll have to adjust it a biy for renpy but the core idea is the same:

Start small: smaller than you thought possible. Start by making pong. Start by making asteroids. Learn how to do collision and movement by making a platformer where the one goal is jumping over a single ledge. The goal is to break your learning down to tiny, incremental steps, so that you are only learning one new thing or mechanic at a time. As you get more confident and start to get a feeling how to think like a computer and solve problems that could arise slowly expand to slightly more complicated projects, move from pong to brick breaker, to pacman, to something else small but has a few more moving parts.

Ask questions (find f.i the forum), look up tutorials, and do not be afraid of experimenting, of breaking things, of taking projects others made and changing things to see what haooens, of really asking “why” things work the way they do.

So, just take a bit of time. No need to be afraid of failing, programming is a skill like any other, it takes time to learn, you are going to suck for a bit. People learning the piano sound awful the first few months, and then suddenly with practice and diligence they start sounding kind of ok, then good, then actually really good. Same with cooking, knitting, writing, painting, building, and programming. All things that take time and effort to get good at. You wont make your dream visual novel today, nor tomorrow, but you will make something, and something is a lot better than nothing.

Its just a really time consuming game. I’ve spent 9 hours playing a game we made it 4 rounds in (in fairness with a few new players). I personally like it, but you really do need to have the patience of knowing you are likely spending the day and probably not finishing regardless. A bit like Talisman.

I feel that given the current trendyness of AI and large language models it seems prudent to mention Façade, an interactive play that used AI and language processing to let the player “speak” to the characters and influence tha narrative. It was very janky and you could break it rather easily, but the concept was solid - the technology was just a decade and a half away.

I’m Icelandic. The water is potable straight from the tap: no filtration or boiling required, albeit the hot water may smell a bit of sulfur due to being heated with geothermal energy.