Trying To Get Into Open Source

Back in September I tried to work on an open source project for a game called Empyrea. I had backed the Kickstarter, but the creator quit working on it full-time and offered everyone refunds. Most backers refused the refunds and asked him to release the source code instead, so he did. It was early-production, written in Python (not my first language), and each source file was a distressing wall of thousands of lines of code. Sadly, I had to give up after only a few hours of trying to add a world export feature. I had thought that working on open source would be fun and exciting, but I was shocked to learn that open source projects are as difficult to develop as work and school projects (if not more!)