How I hate it when devs start taking too long for each update and having the minimum amount of content, especially when you remember when they were just starting out and seemed to have motivation in creating the game.
Part of the problem is that the potions (and the whole "Lost and Found" quest line) seems to stem from complaints about not enough sex scenes. The potions lead to sex scenes, can be repeated, and they add a certain number of sex scenes per update, without forcing people to play the story.
Personally, I'm not interested in the repeatable sex scenes. But that doesn't mean that Patreon backers aren't. It does appear the developers are more interested in this at the moment, but I wouldn't call it milking as long as the Patreon backers are happy. (I don't love 'directed development' in games like this, but I get it.)
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Also, they dropped the ball on Itch this release cycle. 0.7.18 still isn't listed as EA on Itch, and 0.7.17 is out on the free stream via Patreon.