I joined a Discord server called “The Scrapbook.” Every day, users post their most impressive simulations. One user, “CrashTestMummy,” spent three weeks programming a domino effect of collapsing parking garage levels using only Smart cars. Another, “Vectorman,” recreated the asteroid field from Star Wars using school buses.
I sat in my chair. The room was quiet. The screen read: “Simulation Complete. Time: 4.2 seconds. Total Energy Dissipated: 84 megajoules.”
Here is the wreckage of my review. The main menu is a wrecked car sitting silently in a rainstorm. Wipers scrape against a shattered windshield. The radio crackles with static. It sets the tone immediately: you are not here to win.
After spending forty hours crashing everything from a Ford Fiesta to a theoretical Mars rover into every conceivable obstacle (concrete barriers, school buses, grand pianos, the Leaning Tower of Pisa), I have not “beaten” it. I have not even come close. But I have learned a great deal about engineering, chaos theory, and perhaps something uncomfortable about myself.