What I thought would be the most fun part of making Home turned out to be the most mind-numbing. Today I finally finished laying out all the levels of game, putting in all the sprites and tiles and objects, and making all the rooms.

There is still lots of work to, but this process was educational; as I plugged everything in, I could see where rooms were bare, or there weren’t enough objects to interact with, or certain areas looked to similar—all those fixes you might only hear when you playtest. But because I finished the art production part of the game, and then moved on to this layout part, I had the perspective to be self-critical as I went.

Now, of course, I only see all the other work I have to do—I have to script all the objects, fix many of the visuals, and then start making the rest of the game work. But right now it’s nice to know this long and not-thrilling portion of the project is behind me.