Overcoming Your Endless Commitments
An Erasmus semester is all about commitments. First you sign your educational and financial contract and then go on to sign a bunch more about your travel, your quite pricy accommodation in the outskirts of the city, your chosen study subjects, etc-etc. And then also comes your social life: you meet new friends, you commit to (or at least vow to) go with them to different parties, or just drinking at la Plaine in the center of Marseille. And then you start to receive tasks, lots of school homework and exam tasks, obligatory to-read material and an endless amount of creative work (so yet-to-be found out/made up design material by you). And as a plus, by a 33% chance you also have to work, to make a living, to afford taking a semester (especially if it’s a full academic year) out abroad — that might take a day, a couple a week, or even a few hours every day of your time available.
So at the end of the day you’re out on Erasmus with just the fraction of your time available — compared to what you have back home in average circumstances — to actually focus on things and not to just rush through your daily schedules, from programme to programme. But how’d you do it? How’d you choose what to and what not to take on, to commit, to vow at your teachers, your work bosses, your landlord, your friends, your family and so forth to? You have limited energy, limited mental stability and — if you’re honest to yourself — limited skills compared to the many problems you ought to find a way to resolve.
So how would you do it? Let’s see below whether you’d be up to survive an Erasmus semester by yourself!
You have to plan your schedule for your average week and then run a simulation for an entire semester (16 weeks in total) whether your choices were actually right and you have enough energy, mental stability (thus motivation) and skills remaining by the end to survive your semester!
Quick Start
Choose a character, plan one average week using obligations, light commitments, and relax activities. Repeat this week across a 16-week semester. Play day by day, applying capacity changes and resolving unexpected events when they appear. If any capacity reaches zero, consequences follow. At the end of Week 16, calculate your final score and see whether you were capable of surviving your Erasmus semester.
Game Modes
Paper Mode
Draw (copy from the rulebook) the schedule grid to a separate piece of paper, fill in task codes, then keep a small log per day: Day start (recovery) → tasks → rule checks → end-of-day check → totals.
Online Web Game Mode
You may also want to take a look and try the online web app version of the game where all the scheduling processes are automated, so you only have to worry about your commitments and none of the counting and the rest of the meticulous procedures: https://commitments.unifront.hu
Choose Your Character
Identify yourself with one of the habitually different characters below (meaning different capacity point measures)!
/energy/ ++++ (4/5) /mental stability/ + (1/5) /skill/ +++++ (5/5)
You came to Erasmus with a colour-coded Google Calendar, three sharpened pencils, and the unshakable belief that “this semester I’ll finally be on top of everything.” You chose courses for actual academic relevance, you spent real time reading the ECTS descriptions, and you’ve already checked which professors publish in English so you won’t have to write your essays in French at 3:00 a.m. while crying into your laptop. — Your strengths? You understand tasks faster than anyone. You can produce a 16-page analysis with diagrams in one evening if pushed. Your weaknesses? Everything else. — A poorly timed group event, a cancelled bus, an unexpected “mandatory” critique session, or simply someone asking “come for one drink?” is enough to send your mental stability into an irreversible downward spiral. But if you hold it together — even barely — you finish Erasmus with brutal academic results and absolutely no memory of the city you lived in.
/energy/ +++ (3/5) /mental stability/ ++++ (4/5) /skill/ +++ (3/5)
Your calendar is not a schedule but a constellation of vibes. You are the sun around which every international student orbits. If there’s a rooftop gathering somewhere in the neighbourhood, you already know it. — Your strengths? You’re resilient. A ruined group project? A surprise French oral exam? An email from your landlord saying the boiler exploded? All manageable — after all, you survived that techno night that ended at 11:00 a.m. Your weaknesses? You keep forgetting that university actually exists. — But unlike the Nerd, you don’t break: you diffuse stress socially, deny reality until it calms down, then somehow sprint to catch up. Erasmus for you is a balancing act between parties and PowerPoints, friendships and deadlines. If you play your cards right, you leave Erasmus with a full heart, decent grades, and a phone full of numbers you’ll never message again.
/energy/ +++++ (5/5) /mental stability/ +++ (3/5) /skill/ ++ (2/5)
You are a creature of chaos and stamina. You run on coffee, intuition, and blind optimism. You don’t do schedules — the schedule does you. You skip obligations, you skip commitments, you skip sleep. Sometimes you even skip the city you live in. — Your strengths? Nothing can kill your momentum. You “work” only under catastrophic pressure, but when that moment arrives, you pull off miracles with methods nobody understands. Your professors think you’re unreliable; your friends think you’re iconic. Your weaknesses? Actual competence. — Your skill stats are low because you rely on shortcuts, improvised half-solutions, and the cosmic belief that things “will somehow work out.” And the worst part? They usually do. Erasmus for you isn’t a semester; it’s a speedrun.
The Rules
Below are only the essential rules you need to play. You don’t need to memorize everything — you’ll learn the rest while playing.
1. Your Capacity Points
You play the game using three limited resources:
- Energy (E): Physical stamina and time capacity. → Too many obligations drain it quickly.
- Mental Stability (M): Motivation, stress tolerance, emotional balance. → Social pressure, deadlines, and overload affect it.
- Skill (S): Your ability to actually complete tasks well. → Sleep deprivation and chaos reduce it.
Whenever a task affects one of these, it will be written like this: [E-1] = lose 1 Energy [M-1] = lose 1 Mental Stability [S+1] = gain 1 Skill [S0] = no change
2. Types of Activities
Every activity you schedule belongs to one of these categories:
- Obligations (O): Mandatory tasks (classes, commuting, exams). → Cannot be cancelled without harsh consequences.
- Light Commitments (L): Optional but socially or personally important activities (coffee with friends, parties, networking). → Can be cancelled later, but with light penalties.
- Relax Activities (R): Rest and recovery (naps, free time). → No penalties, no bonuses — but they protect you.
3. Time and Scheduling
Your week is divided into day periods: Morning, Afternoon, Evening, and Night. Each period contains hourly time slots. Example: MORNING — 8:[O-01] | 9:[L-02] | 10:[R-01]
Every task has a time length: [T-1hr] = takes 1 time slot. Longer tasks take multiple continuous slots.
4. Hidden Events
Some tasks contain hidden triggers that only activate during play:
- Deadlines (D): After repeating a task a certain number of times, an impromptu programme appears (exam, presentation, etc.).
- Problems (P): Text-based situations where you must make a decision. → Your choice affects your stats.
5. Sanctions and Bonuses
- Sanctions (S!): Negative effects when things go wrong (running out of capacity, missing tasks, cancelling obligations).
- Bonuses (B!): Positive effects for good decisions or lucky outcomes.
Both can have short-term effects (immediate stat changes) and long-term effects (affect your final score).
6. Core Life Rules (Very Important)
a) Overloaded day periods drain Energy: If you completely fill any single day period (morning, afternoon, evening, or night) only with obligations and/or light commitments (without any relax activity), → you lose 1 Energy for that day period.
b) Obligation-heavy evenings drain Mental Stability: If, during the evening time slots, the number of obligations is higher than the number of light commitments, → you lose 1 Mental Stability.
c) Excessive night use reduces Skill: If you use 2 or more night time slots during a single day, → you lose 1 Skill.
d) Starting a task without capacity triggers sanctions: If, when you reach a task, any required capacity point is already at 0, → immediately apply the sanction assigned to that task. This may occur at most once per day.
e) Ending a day with zero capacity triggers a general sanction: If, at the end of a day, any of your capacity points is at 0, → apply the general sanction [S!-#00].
f) How to execute your schedule (order matters): Resolve tasks day by day, period by period, in the exact order you scheduled them.
g) How to insert impromptu programmes (very important): When a deadline instructs you to insert an impromptu programme, you must place it in the specified time-slot territory. Replacing a relax activity is free; replacing a light commitment forces you to postpone it (or cancel it with a penalty). Obligations cannot be replaced.
h) Solving problems can grant bonuses: Correct or optimal decisions during problems can grant bonuses.
i) Ending the semester: After completing Week 16, calculate your final score.
6.5 Daily Recovery (Between Days)
At the start of each new day, before executing any scheduled tasks, apply the following recovery: - [E+2] Energy - [M+1] Mental Stability
Recovery is capped at your character’s starting maximum values. Skill (S) does not recover automatically. If you scheduled R-#03 — Long sleep the previous night, gain +1 additional Mental Stability.
7. The Execution Phase (Quick Reminder)
After scheduling your average week, play the semester day by day, resolving tasks in order, inserting impromptu programmes when triggered, and applying all capacity changes until Week 16 ends.