Buds and blooms.

Finals week is right around the corner, and while this humble scholar has an optimistic lookout for April (go on! ask me about glycolysis!), the first few weeks of May could be complicated. A common pitfall for new college students is not recognizing that most summer classes run at an accelerated rate. Having been around the block a few times, I signed up for a 3-credit summer course expecting the accelerated six weeks, only to discover it is double-accelerated. That's one college credit per week. It's a plant identification course, so I assume it's timed this way for maximum efficiency in the field. I predict I will exit May either loving plants or despising them.

Winter vacation is when I historically do most of my work for Rora, with spring break in second, and summer is a bit of a wild card. My official goal is to finish the game by the end of this year, but my unofficial goal is to finish it by the end of the summer. With beta testing and all that, we'll see how it times out.

I'm presently stitching together the different areas Eastcroft City - the analog for a major city on the eastern seaboard of the United States - trying to decide how much freedom the player has, between the town, the subway, the cemetery, the art museum, etc. Something about Rorasuketo that's become increasingly clear to me is that it's a game that emphasizes travel and exploration. Establishing all of this travel has been interesting. Kady takes cars, buses, and trains to get from place to place, and there are no shortage of brief montages and transitions, because once you establish one, you need to try to keep it somewhat consistent - and I don't want the last half of the game to feel too rushed. The travel montages are a nice breather. It's easier to plop in a scene fade, but I might have the player "work" for the travel a little bit. I worry it's too much - then I remember how people have dashed across the entire map of Stardew Valley goodness knows how many times. Maybe it will be okay!