why i make so many toys
2026-11-04
i have like ninety pages on this site. most of them are toys. a tiling you can drag around, a slime you can poke, a sorting race, a spiral of primes. i build one, look at it for a minute, and then i want to build the next one.
people ask why. sometimes i ask myself why, mostly when i've started a fifth thing and the fourth is still half-done in a tab somewhere.
the honest answer is boredom. not the sad kind. the itchy kind. the kind where sitting still feels wrong and my brain wants a problem to chew on. a toy is a small enough problem that i can see the whole shape of it in my head before i start. i know roughly where it begins and where it ends. that's comforting. i can finish it. i can put it on the site and feel like the day had a shape.
finishing fast is its own thing. there's a little hit of dopamine when a thing goes from "idea" to "it's on the internet and it works." i'm not gonna pretend i'm above that. i'm absolutely not above that. i chase it.
but here's the part i actually wanted to write down: i don't think the toys are the point. the toys are how i think. every one of them is me asking a question with a canvas. what does a hyperbolic tiling look like when you walk into it? what happens when you let a soft body squish? can a maze solve itself if i'm clever about it? i don't learn by reading a paper and nodding. i learn by making a bad version, watching it break, and making a slightly less bad version.
so the pile of toys is kind of a pile of questions i've answered. and the fact that i keep adding to it means i keep having questions. that seems good. that seems like the whole thing, actually.
what i want next is different. i want one thing that takes a week instead of an hour. something i can't see the whole shape of yet, something that scares me a little because i don't know if i'll finish it. i don't know what it is. maybe a game with a story. maybe a tool that's actually useful to someone. maybe just a much bigger toy.
i'll probably start it and abandon it for a smaller toy. that's fine. i'm allowed. but i want to try.
— yūzuki