Today is the day the kids go back to school.

Not going to lie, it reminds me a lot of being their age and heading back after two glorious months of fun in the sun. There was always something strange about that first week back. Summer felt endless right up until the moment it wasn’t, and suddenly you were sitting behind a desk wondering how the hell September had arrived so quickly.

There has been a lot going on in my little corner of the world lately, and for the most part, I’m enjoying every minute of it. The kids had a great first week back, which, naturally, has somehow given me even more ideas for games.

Because apparently my brain is incapable of simply enjoying anything without eventually asking, “Could this be a game?”

I’ve been going back and forth on game design lately. I get excited about one idea, start thinking about another, and before long I’m mentally building three entirely different projects at once. Then, eventually, it hits me like a ton of bricks that maybe I’m looking at everything the wrong way.

Maybe sometimes you have to stop creating long enough to actually enjoy the world around you.

And, perhaps more importantly, I should probably finish the hiking game I’ve already spent an absurd amount of time working on.

There is something intoxicating about always creating. Always pushing forward. Always chasing the next idea. It feels productive, but it can also become a trap. Eventually, you find yourself surrounded by unfinished projects, abandoned concepts, half-built worlds, and folders full of things you swear you’ll return to someday.

That kind of creative clutter starts weighing on the mind.

I know I’m hardly alone in this. I’ve seen countless programmers, artists, writers, and other dreamers talk about the exact same problem. You become obsessed with making one thing until another idea appears and whispers, “Hey, wouldn’t this be even better?”

Before you know it, you’re gone.

I think that mentality has taken its toll on me a little.

So this week, instead of jumping into another completely different project, I’ve been working on expanding the world of A Hike, which is still very much a working title.

I’ve spent a lot of time mapping new locations, trails, forgotten places, and strange corners of the wilderness.

The reason is pretty simple: I’ve always wanted to travel the Appalachian Trail.

There is something almost mythical about the idea of walking through that enormous stretch of wilderness. You are travelling through a world that technically exists inside our own, but once you’re deep enough in the woods, it probably doesn’t feel that way anymore.

And that makes my imagination run wild.

What would you find if you wandered far enough from the main trail?

Maybe an abandoned ghost town slowly disappearing beneath the trees.

Maybe an old coal mine sealed decades ago.

Maybe the remains of some forgotten settlement where nobody remembers the names of the people who once lived there.

Or maybe you find somewhere worse. A place where the ugliness of the past never really disappeared and has been quietly festering in the wilderness, waiting for someone stupid enough to wander in.

That kind of stuff gets me.

I love the idea of a game where exploration itself becomes unsettling. You aren’t walking toward a giant glowing objective marker. You’re simply following a trail, noticing something strange in the distance, and wondering whether curiosity is worth the risk.

That uncertainty is where horror becomes interesting.

And while we’re talking about things I love, can we please bring back old-school computer terminals?

I adore the look of old mainframes and terminal games. Green text. Blinking cursors. Maps made from symbols. Machines that looked like they were doing something important even when they were probably just calculating somebody’s payroll.

There is something wonderfully honest about that style.

Your imagination has to do some of the work.

And I think we desperately need more of that.

We live in a time where everything is becoming increasingly polished, automated, generated, recommended, optimized, and shoved directly into our faces. AI-generated slop has started flooding practically every creative space imaginable, and I think there’s a real danger in allowing convenience to replace imagination.

I’m not some fearmonger screaming that technology is going to destroy civilization.

The lid has already been smashed and the cookie jar is wide open.

We’re not putting the cookies back.

But we should probably start worrying about the mice and flies crawling around inside before somebody decides we’re supposed to eat whatever is left.

That’s the problem.

Technology can be an incredible tool, but creativity still needs a human being behind the wheel. It needs personality. Bad decisions. Weird ideas. Obsessions. Mistakes.

It needs somebody staring at an imaginary Appalachian Trail map at midnight thinking, “You know what this game needs? An abandoned mining town.”

Anyway, where the hell was I?

Right.

My kids went back to school.

Time moves unbelievably fast.

One minute you’re remembering your own first day back after summer vacation, and the next you’re watching your children head through the school doors while realizing those old memories happened decades ago.

Which reminds me of something completely unrelated.

I once read that while The Master of Disguise was being filmed, the September 11 attacks happened around the time they were shooting the infamous Turtle Club sequence. Production reportedly stopped, the cast and crew observed a moment of silence, and filming later continued.

It is one of those bizarre pieces of movie trivia where a ridiculous pop-culture moment exists beside something historically devastating.

Human history is strange like that.

Also, The Master of Disguise was fucking terrible.

Anyway, I’ve got some game testing to do and an eye doctor appointment to get to.

Until next time, be good people.

Take care.