So this is a first impressions of the game and by proxy the people making it. Definitely not strict enough to be a review for sure.
From the looks of things. There's been substantial reworks to the prologue and week 1 finished off recently. And hopefully, there is nothing more to stop further updates from coming out that have to do with the main engine and the underlying code. I saw that some work still needed to be made under the hood and if that can be finished by 'This sunday' I hope to see.
I am excited for the project, enough to pitch some money in. But i cannot come away with an entirely sweet taste in my mouth with what i've been given. And that really comes down to one thing. That content(art and scenes) advertised here is not included in the game in it's current state(Demo or paid patron). A factor in my and no doubt others judgement on what we've been given so far.
These scenes were already finished going by progress posts made on their patron multiple months ago from even mid 2023. I do remember reading somewhere in my day of being around this thread that only content which has matched with the mostly(?) completed week 1 is included in the game with one caveat. A scene with Lucy in the extras that came with missing CGs for the twincs, corrup routes for them, etc. But even that promise is stopped midway as 'End of the Scene Preview' prevents progressing into what seem like the 2nd half of the promised content. This was in October 2023 specifically. Not the first time i got cucked by the end of content section mind(The demo specifically). But that's reiterating paragraph 2 up there.
And what struck me as strange is that the absent scenes were in older editions of the game as they were being released piecemeal with each update. Meaning if you downloaded them when they got released, you'd arguably have more content then anyone does at this very second now. Not that patrons can even go back through the posts and just download those older version, all the links that i could find are dead. Beats me as to why someone passionate to get into the game enough to dig up past builds is stopped.
So. It's just strange. Maybe i'm right in the middle of the waiting period for the definitive edition that'll bring all of these features and scenes and extras into a coherent singular product to digest soon. The beta post promised as much as least from what i could tell. But after getting burned by the front page, I'm cautious. I don't think many people want to do as much digging in as i did when they could easily dismiss this as a less then reputable product that's promises too much to deliver on practically and within a set period of time(Timeline V2.0). Everything looks fine with one or two issues regarding it's playing. And so i've thrown in money to see what becomes of this.
Definitely not promising i'm staying around for the long term. The demo i believe is sufficient for my down payment. But if this doesn't evolve beyond me checking this thread semi-regularly every 2 weeks-1 month to see if the game's been sufficiently developed one way or another then I'm out.
There are too many games in this world. Others making them deliver on their promises regularly. Even if they have a fraction of the features. It's the reliability that keeps my money flowing happily to those people at the very least. But that's just me. Thanks for Coming to my Ted Talk.
Edit: The dev has released the new version a day late, but with everything that has been posted to this thread. My complaints and concerns have been addressed.