I thought I would give this another shot as I tried it out over a year ago and this is the 2nd update since then.
I will admit there have been some nice changes to the game such as the schedule for the people and not needing to wait a whole week for the guy to come by if you missed it.
More things have been added as well, which is where things start falling apart.
-Grocery shopping as a game element, it can't even be straight forward, no you make us have to pick each ingredient. This should be no more than Buy X servings of Food Y. (As in buy X servings of Pasta meal)
-You will counter you can have Eve do it but that is also BS, you have 1h each day to ask and no prompt about how much to buy, or no mention of how much she actually gets.
-Upgrades can only be bought 1 specific hour each day as well. If you want the MC to talk to Eve about it just make it a cut scene when we purchase at WHATEVER time.
-Upgrade the bed rooms, yeah lump them all together as people who are struggling do everything one time when they are doing the work. Also god forbid it actually has a reasonable way to get the 5K needed.
-Which brings me to the next point a broken job system. Got 677 rep and 33 creativity and I guess just fuck me for thinking I would actually start to be able to make money faster. I still only have tier 1 jobs and only do 10 progress per hour spent.
I don't even know how many jobs I got that required 21-23 progress to complete each part, what a waste of any additional progress how it does not roll over to the next or that I could actually do more than 10 per hour at this point.
-The Jobs are also screwed with their description, Took one that had 9 parts with 39 progress and worked out I had basically enough time to complete it. NOPE, turns out it was 10 parts I had to do, I could have possibly done it if I went with bare minimum sleep but was misled on how much actual work it was.
-Also adding in additional cost with the BS story tax is fucked when there is already enough other stuff we need money for.
-Stat/skill system that both does and does not serve a purpose, which can be levelled up arbitrarily here and there without clear guidance.
I can acknowledge there is a lot of effort being put in, however it's being put into the wrong places at this time. It's basically just focused on digging a tunnel but with no concern about support for what is done, it's just gonna cave in at this point.
I can understand why the dream sequences were added, I'm not a fan and think adding in events where the MC can peak on the rest would have been better and tie in better to the main story.
I also don't suggest going with actual motion scenes. Your struggling to actually add in actual content, just a few still frames would be enough then add in some other stuff to see in the play through.
Don't implement systems until it's almost complete, it's poorly implemented otherwise.
Making people work towards a goal is not a bad thing as they get a sense of fulfilment when they reach that goal, up to a certain point, if the amount of work towards to goal is more than the actual value it leaves people feeling empty. Right now this game is very much in the later part of that aspect.
Too little is actually offered for the absurd amount of work that is being asked.
It does not feel like a game but rather chores.
It feels like a case of you mistaking the trees for the forest right now.
If you have not done so yet I suggest you sit down and actually chart out where you want the elements of the game to be and work back from there by asking how you get there and how reasonable it is.
You have implemented obstacles into the game before implementing reasonable means to deal with them.
I do think it's a unique idea and approach, it can also work but it needs it's foundation to be solid first.
