Chris “Gravy” Grayson slouched at his cluttered desk, squinting at the blinking cursor on his computer screen. The glow of the monitor illuminated the small room, revealing mismatched furniture and stacks of unopened mail shoved into every available corner. The faint hum of his ancient desktop fan struggled to drown out the sound of the upstairs neighbor stomping across the floor.

Gravy leaned back in his creaky chair, letting out a long sigh. His wrist brushed against an empty PowerCraze can, sending it clattering to the floor to join the pile of its siblings. He stared at the mess with detached indifference. He’d clean it later. Maybe.

This wasn’t how he thought his life would go.

Gravy wasn’t always a struggling freelance game developer. A decade ago, he’d been Christopher Grayson, a bright-eyed college graduate with a degree in computer science and dreams of working for the biggest game studios in the world. Back then, his dorm room was plastered with posters of iconic games like Infinite Boundary, The Legend of Zariel: Twilight Symphony, and Epic Fight VIII. He wanted to be one of the names that showed up in the credits.

But dreams and reality rarely align. His first job out of college was at a mid-sized studio that specialized in mobile games. For two years, he worked 14-hour days crunching on soulless match-three clones and freemium garbage designed to milk microtransactions out of bored office workers. When the studio eventually went under, no one even bothered to tell him in person. He found out when his keycard stopped working.

That was when he started freelancing. At first, he thought it would be temporary—a way to build his portfolio while waiting for his real career to take off. But weeks turned into months, and months turned into years. One mediocre job after another eroded his enthusiasm for game development. He still called himself a developer, but the truth was he was more of a one-man content mill for anyone willing to pay him enough to keep the lights on.

=========

The email that had come in earlier was unlike most of the requests he usually received. No buzzwords like "synergy" or "revolutionary gameplay." No grand promises of shares in the company "once the game takes off." It was short, to the point, and upfront about the budget.

Subject: Game Project Inquiry

Hey,

I need a simple skiing game developed on a tight budget—$700. Think Insane levels of frustration and difficulty. I’ll provide the assets and concept, but I need you to handle the coding. If you can deliver something playable in two weeks, we’ve got a deal.

Let me know.

Alex Hartman

Gravy re-read the email for the tenth time, still torn between incredulity and mild curiosity. On one hand, $700 for two weeks of work was insultingly low, even for someone in his situation. On the other hand, it was $700 for two weeks of work. He was behind on rent, his internet bill was due, and his fridge contained exactly three slices of pizza and a jar of pickles.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

He exhaled loudly, pushing his hair out of his face. “Well, Gravy, you’ve done worse for less,” he muttered, clicking "Reply."

Two hours later, Gravy had a contract in his inbox and a deposit in his account. The client, Alex, seemed straightforward enough, if not a bit eccentric. Gravy couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t some ambitious indie dev trying to make a name for themselves—it felt more like a high school kid trying to turn a dare into reality.

He didn’t care. Money was money.

Gravy worked best at night. He always had, even in college, when his roommates would stumble into their shared living room to find him typing away at his laptop with a bag of puffs in one hand and an open can of generic in the other. Now, though, the late-night grind wasn’t fueled by passion but by necessity.

He booted up ForgeWorks, his trusted game engine, and stared at the blank project file. “Alright, skiing game,” he said to himself, cracking his knuckles. “How hard can this be?”

The first challenge was the physics engine. He needed the skier to move down the slope in a way that was just functional enough to feel like a real game but janky enough to frustrate anyone who played it. After some trial and error, he managed to get the skier to glide, albeit with a strange wobble that made every turn feel like steering a shopping cart with a broken wheel.

“Perfect,” Gravy muttered, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Next came the obstacles. He imported a batch of assets Alex had sent over—trees, rocks, and, for some reason, a snowman wearing sunglasses. Placing them randomly across the slope, he adjusted the collision detection to be just forgiving enough to let players think they could make it through but punishing enough to ruin their momentum at the worst possible moment.

By 3 a.m., Gravy had a prototype up and running. He leaned back in his chair, sipping the last of his energy drink as the skier on his screen slammed into a tree, triggering an error sound he’d assigned as a placeholder.

“Yup,” he said with a satisfied nod. “This game sucks. Exactly what they asked for.”

Gravy saved his progress and shut down his computer, the adrenaline of productivity giving way to the exhaustion of reality. He glanced around his apartment—the mess, the overdue bills, the faint smell of burnt noodles from last week’s failed experiment in cooking.

He wondered, not for the first time, how he’d ended up here.

In another life, he could’ve been working on blockbuster titles, collaborating with teams of talented developers to create the next great masterpiece. Instead, he was making deliberately bad games for people who probably didn’t even know what they wanted.

But as much as he hated it, there was something oddly freeing about this project. No pretension, no lofty goals—just a ridiculous, chaotic mess of a game that he could create without anyone breathing down his neck. For once, the stakes were low, and the expectations even lower.

Gravy smirked to himself, imagining the reaction of whoever played this game for the first time. The rage, the confusion, the inevitable moment when they gave up and threw their controller across the room.

“Maybe this isn’t so bad,” he muttered, heading to bed. “It’s not like anyone’s gonna remember this thing in six months.”

The next morning, Gravy woke up to a flood of emails from Alex—more assets, more voiceover clips, and even a detailed list of insults to incorporate into the game. He couldn’t help but laugh as he read through them.

“Who taught you to ski? Your grandma?”

“Nice job, genius. Maybe try using your eyes next time.”

“Wow, you’re about as coordinated as a drunk flamingo.”

Gravy shook his head, pulling his chair up to the desk. Cracking his knuckles. “Let’s make something awful.”

For the first time in years, he felt a flicker of excitement—not the passion he once had for game development, but something close enough to keep him going.

Two weeks of chaos, frustration, and caffeine-fueled coding later, Slalom Struggle was ready to launch. Gravy submitted the final build, collected his payment, and leaned back in his chair, staring at the now-empty balance that would soon go toward rent.

“Here’s to another piece of garbage made by my hands,” he said with a laugh, raising an invisible toast to the absurdity of it all.