Unless you or me or anyone else is actually putting money in the game, yours and mine opinion are worth exactly zero, only opinion that matters are the ones from the patreons
You are right, he shouldn't let the forum users make the game for him but he should listen to the things they have to say and think about what they said. Not every forum user wants to completly change the game but help improving it.
Encouragement is great. Encouragement
and constructive criticism is better.
So, some criticism: I enjoy branching storylines, but having your readers only see halve the scenes you made right from the start can backfire badly. It's likely going to fragment more as the story progresses and that means splitting time/effort between branches, having updates feel "too short" because people see only a small part of mutually exclusive events, etc.
Given the way this is appears to be structured, I'm a little worried they'll wear themselves thin down the line.
(Also, if Lain ever feels like making a mod for this that chains all non-branch-specific missable scenes, I'd play that one and never go back. Branches are one thing, but a bunch of other scenes have no good reason for being mutually exclusive.)
Anyway, this has lots of potential and hopefully those worries are unfounded. To agree with pretty much everyone in this thread: renders and character models are gorgeous. Writing is compelling. I didn't dislike the phone gimmick nearly as much as I'd have expected
Keep up the great work and best of luck!
EDIT:
hit the up arrow and the enter key at the same time. on your keyboard.
Thanks for the tip. I'd still say minigames should always be skippable, but this works too.