TL;DR: Tried to make a poetic game about rain. Accidentally made a chaotic thing about data. Remember to reject all.
From this:
To this:
The initial idea was to make a calm little game about collecting rain. You'd guide the wind, bring clouds together, and when enough gathered, it would rain into a collector.
The wind system worked "fine". But the clouds... oh boy, since I've been trying to fiddle with shaders, I thought, "lets make the clouds using shaders".
Let's just say that was a very very humbling experience. Whole first day was gone, and the above gif was the best it ever looked (notice there are no clouds)
After almost giving up on the Jam completely, I dropped it and started over with a new idea that was simpler, but also riskier.
That's how Crumbs happened. A game about data, and how all those harmless little bits, when combined, can reveal a lot more than you would expect.
Even when you reject cookies, you’re still leaking information. I wanted to somehow show that you can still be identified.
I just couldn't really prove it without sending data to a server, which would’ve crossed a line. So I stopped there, everything stays local and the game only demonstrates what could be collected and let the player connect the dots.
(FYI: According to GDPR and similar laws, even this "harmless" info can count as personal data if used for tracking).
The gameplay itself was part of the joke. Rejecting cookies over and over again, annoying, sometimes misleading, and repetitive.
Also, I believe it turns out a cookie consent popup as a thumbnail doesn't exactly attract players. I rated almost 30 other games, got 13 coolness, and got exactly 20 ratings.
And I learned that jumping straight into chaos doesn’t always work. It needed some foreshadowing before the storm.
Next time you click “Reject All,” remember the crumbs might be still watching you.
(I find this gif to have a certain 
