Another boost to morale here. With every room of the game drawn out the exact way I want it, I can clearly see everything I have yet to create. I had to shrink the map even further into a 4x4 grid, made most rooms fit into the same walls, and connected the rooms in a way that made the forest feel varied and not like a bunch of filler space. I made it so each of the 5 caves have different gemstones in them making exploration necessary to purchase items from the store. I made it so that each room will take multiple minutes to explore as well (assuming you fight at least a few enemies).
There's markers for enemy placement, gem dig spots, every chest, every flower, every bush, and every rock. I even got some ideas for story pacing with the placement of things in Clover's house. Using text and the environment to lead the player along is much easier than puppeteering and coding everything which I'd rather do with a Pokemon-style grid based system where things are easy to move around.
If I continue this with the dungeons (which I'll be doing next) I can have it so I won't need to create a cutscene creation pipeline. Making cutscenes with my current setup would be a nightmare, so if I can sidestep that then the hardest parts of making this game are done. I really feel like I can finish this thing now and once I sketch all the dungeons I bet the feeling will multiply.
