I have been sitting in an office library in Seoul, South Korea. It’s been two hours since I have been trying to write about my experience of how I got here from Bangladesh and what I will be doing here for the next four months. But I couldn’t decide where I should start, how I should continue and last be not the least, when I should stop.
It’s almost 1 AM here. There’s no bus or metro to return home anymore. The room is empty and there’s no sound. I was looking outside through the glass window while thinking about what to write. Suddenly I noticed a girl strolling along the empty street. That triggered a memory from my childhood. The time from when I started walking alone. Maybe, I should share that story from my childhood which inspired me to develop a game of my own. A game is what actually led me to try for starting a startup of my own, but not the same one.
When I was young, we used to celebrate Eid day (a religious holiday celebrated by the Muslims) at my grandparents’ house which is in a village of Comilla division in Bangladesh.
As an introvert in a house full of more than twenty people, Eid day was nothing special for me but being confined in a corner room and finding some indoor games or books to entertain myself.
The combination of the two is not supposed to go together. That’s why it’s not that common either. Only one store in the village sold that item. I heard how weirdly amazing it tastes from my cousins plenty of times but never had tried before.
That day, I was invited too. I was really excited to go. Because I was considered included in the group and kids love to be involved.
By the time I got ready and came out, I found out that everyone left without me. They must’ve forgotten about me like “Home Alone”.
Nonetheless I was determined to go find the store and have some Paratha-Rosogolla by myself. So, I started walking alone knowing nothing about the direction and of course without any money. I walked for almost three to four hours getting nowhere near to the bazaar, instead found myself back at home.
It gave me an idea of a game — “How to find my way home without knowing the direction”. Since that day I used to wake up in the morning before everyone did, go out and start walking in random and different directions each day. Mission was to find a given destination and then find my way back home.
“Given destination” was like a school, a post office, a mosque or a temple that I decided for myself. So it was basically like a random route with a specific mission for each level of a game. Let me remind you that a village usually has one or two schools, only one post office and only one mosque or temple. Yet, I successfully completed most of my missions and came back home. Sometimes, with the help of other people. Sometimes I was dragged home by older strangers who used to think I was a lost kid.
Those missions used to take an hour to, for worst case, four. I still play this game whenever I travel to a new place.
So, this is how I developed my first ever game in life, without knowing about any video game or programming.
