Heat is the biggest factor holding me back. Simply put, I cannot work in excessive heat. By excessive heat, I mean that my home is a one hundred year old building with no insulation and no air flow. This is Southern California, and we're just not set up for dealing with temperatures above 90 or below 50. Anything outside that range taxes my energy. I have to work in the heat for my actual software engineering job, and by the evening the house is usually so hot that I cannot bear to code for another minute.

The heat wave ends in a few more days, though, so I can resume my work when it's over.

I really need to get momentum going to get this game done. I have about 4 weeks left in the month; if I can release this game by then, it will be the perfect timing for a Halloween-themed game. If I drag it out until sometime in the middle of October, that isn't the end of the world. It would still be fine that way.

What I don't want to happen is to release it on Halloween. While it looks good on paper - releasing a spooky game on a spooky holiday seems like perfect timing - it becomes awkward on November 1st, when the spooky season is "over." Luigi's Mansion 3 was released on Halloween. The problem there was that I couldn't enjoy the game on Halloween because it was Halloween and there were other things to do. When I finally got the chance to play the game the next day, Halloween Season was over. 

To avoid such a fate, I need to start building momentum. I need to get myself into the spooky mindset. I need to finish this game!