A Day That Started with Design
Today started in a good way.
The focus at the beginning was on LarixGames itself: the games, the presentation, the identity, and the feeling of the project as a whole. I had already been thinking a lot about what this collection of games should become, but today was the day when many of those ideas finally started to come together.
I spent time redesigning the site, reworking the language around the project, and trying to make everything feel more coherent. Instead of sounding too experimental, too unfinished, or too much like a collection of disconnected prototypes, I wanted LarixGames to feel like something more intentional: a growing collection of ad-free games in development.
That small shift in wording mattered more than I expected. It changed the tone of the site completely. It made the project feel calmer, clearer, and more grounded.
Trying to Give the Project a Real Shape
Part of today’s work was about deciding how the project should be presented to people.
The games themselves are still in progress, but I did not want the site to feel like a rough testing page anymore. I wanted it to feel like a real home for the work. That meant simplifying the homepage, adjusting the design, and making sure the structure made sense.
The main site became more focused. The GitHub Pages library became more aligned with the visual identity. The play pages started to feel like they belonged to the same project instead of looking like separate technical parts. Even the logo and icon work helped push things in that direction.
For the first time in a while, the project started to feel less scattered.
It felt like LarixGames was becoming something with its own tone and its own presence.
Thinking About Visibility and Marketing
At the same time, I was also thinking beyond the site itself.
A big part of the day was not just about how the project looks, but how it should be introduced to people. I spent time thinking about how to present the games on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Reddit, and what kind of identity would make sense for them there too.
That led to a broader question: what exactly is LarixGames trying to say?
Not in a vague branding sense, but in a practical way. If someone visits the site or sees a post about one of the games, what are they supposed to understand immediately?
The answer that made the most sense was also the simplest: this is a growing collection of ad-free games being actively developed over time.
That became the center of everything else.
The site, the messaging, the game library, and even the ideas around social media all started to align around that one idea. The project no longer had to sound like a rough experiment. It could sound like a body of work that is still evolving.
The Shift from Building to Debugging
But the day did not stay in that creative mode.
At some point, while working on the sites and trying to make everything cleaner and more professional, I noticed that something was wrong on the backend side. The site was running, but records were missing. Content that should have been there was not showing up.
At first, it felt like an ordinary technical issue, maybe a route problem, maybe a connection issue, maybe a configuration mismatch. That kind of thing happens often enough that it did not seem especially dramatic in the beginning.
But once I started checking the server and the database more carefully, the situation changed.
The app could still connect to MongoDB. The server was still running. The collections still existed. But the actual records inside them were mostly gone.
That was the moment the whole mood of the day changed.
Discovering the Attack
The deeper I looked, the worse it became.
Eventually, there it was: a database named READ_ME_TO_RECOVER_YOUR_DATA.
That was the point when this stopped being ordinary debugging.
It became clear that the database had been exposed publicly when it should not have been, and that it had almost certainly been found by an automated attacker. The ransom note left behind made that impossible to ignore. It was one of those moments where the technical problem becomes instantly personal, not because it is sophisticated, but because it is so blunt.
I had spent the day trying to shape the future of the project, make it more real, make it more visible, make it more presentable, and suddenly I was also dealing with the consequences of a serious mistake in the infrastructure behind it.
That contrast hit hard.
The Strange Feeling of Losing Data While Building Identity
What made the whole thing feel especially strange was the timing.
On one side, I had been spending hours making LarixGames feel more coherent, more intentional, and more ready to be seen. I was refining the design, cleaning the structure, improving the message, and thinking about how to share the games with people.
On the other side, I was suddenly dealing with the fact that part of the project’s own content had been lost.
There is something very strange about trying to prepare a project for the outside world while simultaneously discovering damage inside it. It creates a tension between appearance and reality. The site looks cleaner. The brand feels stronger. The direction makes more sense. But behind that, the database had been compromised, and some of the history of the project had already been erased.
That was probably the most important emotional thread of the day.
The work on presentation and the work on recovery were not separate things. They ended up connected very directly. One was about what LarixGames should become, and the other was a reminder of what can happen if the foundation underneath it is not protected properly.
What Survived
Thankfully, not everything was lost.
The application still runs. The sites are still there. The uploads volume still contains images. The game library still exists. The new design work is still meaningful. The branding changes still matter. The structure that started taking shape today is still real.
Even the process of recovery taught me something useful. I checked old Docker volumes, local copies, uploads, and older Mongo states. I worked through version mismatches, tested old database volumes, and tried to recover what I could. Some things were missing, but some things survived. That matters.
It changed the story from total collapse to partial loss and forced rebuilding.
That is not ideal, but it is survivable.
Why These Two Parts of the Day Actually Belong Together
At first it felt like I had lived two completely different days inside one day.
The first was about design, structure, identity, and marketing.
The second was about security, data loss, Docker volumes, and recovery.
But the more I think about it, the more those two parts belong together.
Trying to market a project means believing that it deserves to be seen.
Redesigning the site means believing that it deserves a better home.
Recovering from an attack means deciding that it is still worth protecting and rebuilding.
In that sense, all of today’s work was really about the same thing.
It was about taking LarixGames seriously.
Not just as a collection of games, but as something that needs identity, structure, visibility, and resilience.
What I Take From Today
Today did not go the way I expected.
I thought I would mainly be working on presentation, polish, and direction. I did not expect the day to include database forensics, ransom notes, and lost records. But in a strange way, that made the progress more real.
The redesign work helped define what the project wants to be.
The database loss reminded me what the project still lacks.
The recovery work made it clear what needs to be protected next.
That combination made the day exhausting, but also important.
Moving Forward
After today, the path forward feels different.
The goal is no longer just to make LarixGames look better.
It is to make it stronger.
That means:
- continuing the redesign work
- refining the library and the game pages
- building a clearer public identity for the games
- setting up safer backend practices
- restoring admin access and content
- making sure the project has real backups going forward
The creative side and the technical side are not separate anymore. They are part of the same responsibility.
Closing Thoughts
Today started with a simple goal: make LarixGames feel more real.
By the end of the day, that goal had become deeper than I expected.
Making a project feel real is not only about how it looks. It is also about how well it is held together when something goes wrong. It is about whether the structure behind it can support the identity in front of it. It is about whether the work is only visible, or actually durable.
LarixGames still has a long way to go. But after today, it feels more defined, more honest, and more worth building carefully than before.
