It's unfortunate the Mc's attitude with Ava at the beginning, I mean she's not to blame for Maya being taken, he's taking it out on the wrong person.
Hate to disappoint you but that's life, people are not always make logical decisions.
It's quite known writer's method to show humanity of a character - everyone makes mistakes and MC of this game is not an exception. It's easier to immerse in the story that way.
But I totally agree with your thoughts about Emily, I thought so too. Time jumps with no context serve as a way to tell a better story but the way dev uses it - it's quite the opposite, it's only confusing and irritating.
Ava Interactive
Let me show the consequences of adding future tags.
I saw your game, looked at the tags and decided to download it. It was 0.20, I just played it today. My first impression: renders look good, especially Ava, dev tries to tell a story here and it's great. Next one: hmm, too much text, that's not a book, does dev know why it's called visual novel? Next one: I know all these methods of writing, I can predict the story, that's not great, it's just
, what's it got do with pregnancy? Final one: WTF was that? All that tags and no sex scenes? Pregnancy tag and no pregnancy? Another
that is too soft and shy to interest a female? How he can be a widower with a daughter? Is this some kind of joke?
Promises you failed to deliver makes people annoyed and angry. And with that all your small mistakes becomes great ones.
But I decided to give you a second chance after reading a changelog and played 0.26. Yes, writing got better but everything else is still the same. Let me give you my thoughts.
Time jumps are good when context is known. For example, scene ends with a big reveal and the next scene is in another time explaining to reader how it comes to that. Or scene finishes part of the story and the next one is some time later (like you did after presenting Maya, skipping half a year). Time jumps to the past with no reason are senseless and it's confuses reader.
Mini-games in VN must have a reason. If you are telling a story mini-games can have only one reason - to irritate a reader. It's good you take away some of them, do it for all of them please. Timed choice is enough.
Another thing is storytelling. When reader meets Maya and his alter-ego everything is good. Though reader may have a question about Maya's connection to MC. Next few scenes makes this question stronger. Then there comes protesters (main hint about what is going on). Well, that scene really is ugly and it's not only my opinion. Lily is in there so MC must show himself as a father, Maya is something on a background at that moment. Maya taking away scene maybe is good for a book or in a TV-show but in a visual novel it looks alien. Because context (the answer to question about Maya's connection to MC) is unknown to reader. After that context becomes known reader feels betrayed and he/she feels no connections to MC's actions.
What I want to say: VN is not a book, there are other principles at work there. Reader must understand motivations of MC to feel any connection to that guy. So reader either know the story (for some extent) or MC knows no more than reader.