over the last two days I've been experimenting with the Wonderland Engine. it's a web game engine and similar but simpler than Unity. ergonomics are pretty good! for example play mode = it compiles the whole game and opens it in a new tab in your default browser in less than a second. and there's a button to simulate physics so you don't have to switch to the browser if you merely want to confirm that physics objects land/collide as you expect. I haven't coded much in it (Javascript) but even just looking up the documentation and thinking about how I would create a minimalist version of my main project in this toy engine had my mind racing with cool ideas. one of those ideas ended up in my main project a couple hours ago so I'm still making real progress on this little detour.
my take-away so far: it can be really productive to imagine you have to start your current project over from scratch and make a simplified toy version of it. what would be different, what would stay the same? how would you solve problems you already solved (but maybe you're not 100% happy with the solution you came up with)?

I don't know if I will actually make the simplified version of my main project in Wonderland Engine for laughs. but I want to at least get a decent FPS character controller going, with shooting and a moving and shooting enemy, maybe 1-2 more important mechanics. then upload a build to itch.