Choose Your Burnout
<p>This is a submission for the DEV April Fools Challenge</p> <p>Choose Your Burnout<br> The inevitable simulation of modern work culture.<br> What I Built</p> <p>I built a game that solves absolutely nothing.</p> <p>Choose Your Burnout is a dark, choice-based simulation where every path leads to the same destination: a slow, optimized collapse.</p> <p>You start by selecting your career:</p> <p>The Corporate Labyrinth<br> The Disruptive Alchemist (Startup)<br> The Freelance Mirage<br> The Academic Basement<br> The Gig Economy Engine</p> <p>From there, you make decisions that trade:</p> <p>Sanity<br> Sleep<br> Energy</p> <p>…for:</p> <p>Money<br> Ego<br> and the illusion of progress</p> <p>There is no winning state.</p> <p>Only different versions of “this seemed like a good idea at the time
This is a submission for the DEV April Fools Challenge
Choose Your Burnout The inevitable simulation of modern work culture. What I Built
I built a game that solves absolutely nothing.
Choose Your Burnout is a dark, choice-based simulation where every path leads to the same destination: a slow, optimized collapse.
You start by selecting your career:
The Corporate Labyrinth The Disruptive Alchemist (Startup) The Freelance Mirage The Academic Basement The Gig Economy Engine
From there, you make decisions that trade:
Sanity Sleep Energy
…for:
Money Ego and the illusion of progress
There is no winning state.
Only different versions of “this seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Demo
🔗 Live Demo: [👉https://chooseyourburnout.netlify.app/]
Code
🔗 GitHub Repository: [👉 https://github.com/aisyahz/Choose-Your-BurnOut.git]
How I Built It
This project is powered by:
React + Vite – for fast iteration and a clean component structure Tailwind CSS – for brutalist, high-contrast UI control Framer Motion (motion/react) – for cinematic transitions, glitches, and subtle tension SVG + layered rendering – to build the “Digital Mask” face system The Burnout Engine
At the center of the experience is a reactive face:
A pseudo-3D Digital Mask that evolves based on your stats.
Sleep ↓ → eyes droop and blink irregularly Sanity ↓ → asymmetry, glitches, red flickers Energy ↓ → head tilts, movement slows Ego ↑ → forced, unsettling smile Money ↓ → structural fragmentation
It doesn’t just display stats. It becomes them.
Key Features 🧠 The Burnout Engine
A living, degrading face that reacts to every decision.
🧭 Thematic Career Paths
Each path has its own visual and psychological identity:
Corporate → structured, grid-like, suffocating Startup → chaotic, pulsing, unstable Freelance → fragmented, isolated Academic → slow decay, heavy inertia Gig → fast, repetitive, algorithm-driven 🧪 Premium Glitch Aesthetic
A sculpted dark UI with:
chromatic aberration flickering overlays system logs subtle instability
Everything feels… almost under control.
📸 The Screenshot Weapon
At the end, you receive a final report:
A dramatic “digital eulogy” of your decisions.
Designed to be shared. Designed to hurt.
The Vibe
Polished. Cold. Slightly accusatory.
It looks like a productivity tool. It behaves like a breakdown.
Why I Built This
I wanted to explore a simple idea:
What if we treated burnout like a system… and optimized it?
Not to fix it. Just to measure it. Beautifully.
Prize Category 🎯 Community Favorite
This project is designed to be:
instantly understandable visually memorable screenshot-worthy painfully relatable Final Line
“You did everything right.” Productivity: 0%
Hashtags
ChooseYourBurnout #GameDev #IndieGame #UIUX #BurnoutEngine #DigitalArt #WebDev
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