How's the game's progress been over this last year?
Slow.
Are the base mechanics still the same?
There have been some smaller mechanics changes, but not to the level of fundamentally altering the game's nature, which seems to be what you're after.
Is the dialogue mostly the same?
If you mean girl dialogue, then yes. There are some additional NPC encounters. Not everyone is a fan of those, though.
Do you think I should give it a try again or just wait some more?
Honestly, if you're not into the brothel management part, your wait might be forever. However...
...not that much different from straight up opening my personal folder and just watching the raw pics.
...this is a feeling somewhat familiar to me from the time I played Whoremaster.
My solution was to take BK and really put the screws onto the actual game part. Goldo's been keeping the game relatively easy as to not scare away newcomers and casual players. I had no such compunctions, so the end result is a messy, sometimes unforgivingly difficult, at other times hilariously unbalanced mod/fork of the 0.15b version.
If you want a significantly different experience while still playing Brothel King and using the same girl packs, you might give it a try. Fair warning: it's somewhat unstable, I'm not supporting or updating it in the near future, and it's been called 'the Dark Souls of pimping-sims'.
Also, while at times I felt the naming conventions for the files to be clunky or obscure, and the way the pics were invoked in the game to be erratic or somewhat unpredictable despite my best efforts
I (and possibly others as well) would be interested to see some examples of this clunkiness/unpredictability. Significant effort and discussions have gone into trying to make it as intuitive as possible, so feedback would be appreciated.
If not, do you recommend me any other game that follows the girl pack model?
Not really. AFAIK, Brothel King is just about the best of these. A BK forum regular has been working on a similar game, but it's unreleased right now. And given that he's a professional coder, I wouldn't expect serious VN-style content from there, either.
0.2
...
better framework for making characters unique.
Oh, yeah, 0.2 beta exists. And it has an improved girl personality system, but that's mostly just groundwork for the future, the actual impact on the game is not very significant. Some more texts get altered to personality-specific versions, and there are thrice as many personalities, but it doesn't alter the fundamental nature of your interactions with the girls. And it was 'community-sourced', so there might be some weirdness and inconsistencies in there.
I don't recall if there is story progressions.
Some chapter 2 stuff is in, I haven't really looked if it's complete now.
The Dev seems to be warming to the idea of a tightly controlled github, which should allow the talented coders in the community to contribute and allow the Dev to focus on bigger picture stuff.
Nothing has really blocked anyone from contributing, and several people have done so. I'm not sure going the public development route is going to help, since that's basically herding cats at best, turning Goldo into an administrator and sucking most development joy out of his life.
Maybe if his free time dwindles even more...
I recall reading something awhile back about some packs being ported from 1 or 2 similar games.
Whoremaster is the only one I know. Pytfall packs are largely unusable, and right now I don't recall any other games with significant numbers of girl packs.
