It has apparently been three years since the creation of Ponxiety, my first ever game creation that made me really proud of my below-average skills. It was an achievement to create a game that every wannabe game developer could make.

However, I was not satisfied with a simple game of Pong. I wanted more. I wanted to use every possible idea I had to make it stand out, but that was rather difficult, as there are possibly thousands of different iterations of Pong that already exist. I wanted to make it mine, to show whoever tried it out that this was not just another Pong game made by a newbie.

Ponxiety came to life from my own frustrations trying to learn game programming. I wanted it to be a bit difficult, a bit more challenging, and a bit annoying. I wanted the player to feel something when playing it, even if it was anger.

Over the years, I moved from one programming language to another, doing meaningless tasks, Raylib bindings, and other projects that had no purpose. I left Love2D and Lua, thinking that if I switched to another language, I would become a better programmer. I was wrong. I now realize that it's not the programming language that makes you a better programmer, but your skills, tools, and understanding of how to use them.

That's why I've decided to go back to the beginning, where it all started. I came back to Love2D and decided to re-write my first ever games to make them more optimized, more enjoyable, and to get back into the game and understand how enjoyable it was using Lua and Love2D.

The new update to Ponxiety brings a few additional features. Firstly, it was mainly done to delete a lot of poorly optimized Lua code. Even though it's a simple Pong game, it should never have been written the way it was. Secondly, the new update brings additional ways for the AI to be more of a d*ck to the player and cheat when certain criteria are met. Lastly, I wanted to reignite my game development fire once again.

Although this is just a Pong clone, I hope you enjoyed playing it. I hope that it made you feel different from what you are used to seeing, trying, or playing in terms of Pong.

Thank you.