This, my dear friends, is what happens to you when it feels like you've won the lottery. And yes, I use light mode. Ahem--

3rd place. THIRD. PLACE. THAT. THAT IS CRAZY. I LitERaLLy COULD NOT HEAR THE REST OF THE ANNOUNCEMENT AFTER "ALL THAT (PROBABLY) GLITTERS" WAS SPOKEN OVER ANYTHING GOING ON IN MY HEAD. So, I'm sorry if I seemed rude when I did not talk much, I was truly just... Speechless. Reeling. Screaming in my house. Running around. Shaking. Crying. CRYING. I've never placed in anything this huge before. I still haven't really calmed down. (But I've calmed down enough to write normal sentences again, I think.)

The night after this announcement, I only got three hours of sleep. I couldn't go back to bed.

Something I made... Something I made for fun... Got recognized and awarded. That's a f*cking dream come true. (I don't normally curse outside my games, I'm sorry... but THAT'S how emotional I got and still am right now, over 36 hours later.) 

I really, seriously, truly thought that I wouldn't get anything more than an honorable mention. Also, because of how much time I'd have to allocate to making an entirely new game, I even considered not joining the jam at all.  I mean, my initial goal WAS to win some placement in Spooktober, but as I continued developing and writing and drawing this little game (and the characters... I've always felt kind of suppressed talking about my characters, but I love them so much 😭), I found that I wanted it to just be something I would be proud to show my peers, followers, family, and my future self.  And also totally not because I saw everyone else's progress and realized I didn't have a chance looool

I can't believe it. It's so, SO surreal 😭 I don't know how many times I'm going to say that (or use this 😭 emoji in my tweets), but I really can't believe it yet. I'm literally going to analyze WHY I got a placement at all. I understand how 2nd and 1st got their placement and I'm insanely happy for them. But... mine? Up there?

I got a couple more downloads after the announcement and it kind of worries me, like an Excello effect (my game for O2A2), not the grade system, but where people like to compare games to each other, I guess? Excello was being compared to horror games when it was not a horror game.  But that's just something I have to learn to deal with.

Anyway, holy crap. (<- somehow my new favorite expression. Hopefully I'll stop soon.)

Thank you, Nai, for hosting this game jam. Thank you, judges, for playing our games. Thank you, person, for reading this thing and riding along with me. Thank you so much. I will never forget this experience for as long as I live.

Happy Halloween to my fellow rats, bats, and birds, and I hope to make a video with a real postmortem about this sometime soon.

What a journey this has been. So far.