My project plan helped me get past a very frustrating time. I've moved onto just working on the game in chronological order now. It's unpolished, but the first two rooms and the first puzzle work well.

I have been playing point-and-click games this week. I tried to ignore them completely when I first started developing games as I was worried I'd be intimidated and also a massive copycat. But that's definitely not a danger now that my Edda game is fully planned out.

I played the Excavation of Hob's Barrow, which is great, and I am quite far into Kathy Rain Director's Cut. They're quite similar in a strange way (and I had no idea they would be). Both are brilliant. 

Absolutely, they do intimidate me, but I make no pretence to be even an amateur developer. I'm more an amateur template-manipulator. I am coding some C, but this isn't exactly Swordfish. I'm not a small blonde girl breaking into the Unix system to lock all the doors in the dinosaur enclosure while looking annoyingly precocious. 

I just am trying to make the game the best it can be, within the limits of my time and ability.

I have ideas for two more games after this, so I started looking at concept art for my next non-Undy game. I have a great idea for a game about some kids in a village in the early 90s, but my initial art attempt was not exactly successful (I tried to make a pixel-art dog - don't ask).

Playing these other games makes me realise I can be a little more story-focused if I want to be. I have been slightly terrified of the game being boring, so I pared back the dialogue so much as to be positively bleak. I can add richer dialogue later, although my current favourite line is "vCross is greater than 1".

OK, that's a nerdy joke, but it's true. I got my character to say that so that I know when a certain global variable has hit 2. When this happens, different dialogue and actions can occur in a certain puzzle.

End.