@xianc78 @Alex i want as much of the game world to be explorable as possible, but in an easy way for the player that doesn't get too annoying. i also wanted to make the NPCs feel relatively "alive" with their schedules and such, so tucking them between a bunch of loading zones would mean that the player wouldn't be able to see that as easily. if i wanted to add separate rooms in houses blocked by doors that you have to go through, i would also not exactly want to add every single room to every single house because that would take far too long, but seeing a door that can't be opened in a game that is an open-world adventure is always pretty sad. so i settled on making a bunch of house layouts that had the entire house in one easily accessible map for each region, then filled those houses with things that i thought the NPCs would realistically have in their homes. there is often some environmental story telling if you look close enough ;)

there is also a character who can pick simple locks if you have her in your party, so i have tried to adhere to that as close as possible. doors and chests that normally require standard keys can be picked by her, and yeah that means you can go inside people's houses if they're locked up (though it takes away from your karma). so it creates another issue where, if there is a door that is just there for decoration, i can't just say it is locked or say nothing at all because the player comes to expect that they can go through every door, even if it is locked. there are a few notable times where i do have to do this unfortunately, when there is literally NOTHING to be gained from going behind the door. like i said, there are going to be plenty of NPCs who are in different rooms at different times and such, but there are some houses that just have literally nothing and nobody in them so you do have to kind of cut things out in some places, just to make the experience ultimately better for the player as well as yourself as the dev trying to make everything.

most pokemon houses are completely unrealistic too, without beds or bathrooms. the MC house only has one bed and no bed for their mom lol.

mother does a decent job at its house building because it is meaning to really sell the modern, american aesthetic. even in earthbound though, there is not even a room for ness's mom.

i've at least tried to make sure that everything necessary to accommodate the NPCs is there, even if the designs of the houses themselves are fairly simple and not quite "realistic" :)

on the topic of towns only having 5 buildings or whatever, this is also true to my game! the towns are on a very, very small scale. the game takes place during a plague, where a lot of the population has died, so i didn't want to have these massive cities with absolutely nobody and nothing in them. there is a little bit of that, but just enough to sell the idea. when envisioning towns for the D&D campaign that i run, they are much more sprawling and the bigger cities even take hours to traverse on foot.