Once upon a time, I was making a fangame. Now, I'd only watched people play them, and had never actually played one myself, so I lacked a bit of insight. Realizing this, I asked TJ if there was a game I could play to get some ideas for good level design, and he suggested Celebrate 100. I was like "Ok, I'll try it out and see if I can get any inspiration."
That was back in December. Underestimating how truly bad I was, I pushed on whenever I got some free time to sit down and play. There were a couple of screens that really gave me trouble, like the needly area in the 50s, and floor 69 (
). I felt the hype rising as I reached the golden area, and was equally crushed when I discovered there was no pussy save for me to take advantage of. But shortly after when the game provided a shortcut through a sphincter, I pulled out Record My Jumps, practiced it a few times, and made sure I got the right align before returning to the game. You can imagine the rush of ecstasy that flooded me as I jumped through it and skipped 3/4ths of the screen. That was the moment when I finally felt like I knew what I was doing.
And tonight, my (not very) epic story reaches its conclusion. After nearly breaking my headset, scaring my neighbors with screams of dismay intermingled with insane laughter, and contracting what I'm pretty sure is carpal tunnel in my left wrist from mashing Z and Shift for over an hour straight on the final boss, I couldn't believe my eyes when the credits started to play. After months of grinding, I'd finally done it.
Where will I go from here? Who knows. This was only meant to be a short project to gain a little street cred, so that I could say that yes, I have beaten a fangame. But now that I've tasted victory, I feel the bloodlust - a hunger that can only be satiated by jumping over spikes and dodging delicious fruit. I think for now though, I'm just gonna go stick my hands in a bucket of ice water.
Note that the death count and timer aren't exactly accurate - the death count includes a few hundred deaths from when I mashed R in a furious rage after dying for the 20th time to the last spike in a screen, and the timer doesn't include the hours I spent curled in the fetal position begging for it to be over.
