I'm going to repeat what I said in January.
I understand the devs of this game being very ambitious, this is already a huge and popular game, but I don't think a lot of the stuff they're doing or want to do is necessary. The game is perfectly fine as a linear VN game. It doesn't need....
- A cell phone app
- Any sandbox stuff
- Complicated character bio's
- Any mini-games or any other custom options they may want to add
That is stuff to do in your 2nd game when you know what you're doing, like Dr.Pinkcake did for example. When you're a beginner you shouldn't do things that are way out of your skillset. Some devs start more advanced than others because they already have some skills, maybe you make great renders or writing. Maybe you know coding well so you can implement more complicated mechanics. But the large majority of devs do not have that. So use your first game to develop skills if you didn't already have them so you can make your 2nd game better, don't overcomplicate things early on.
It's like when you're starting to workout. You start weak, unathletic and generally in terrible shape. You need to learn how to master pushups before you can try to bench 300 pounds. If you struggle to do pushups, and try to bench-press something heavy, it isn't going to go well. This is sort of what has happened to this dev team, and why they've gone silent and hasn't had a release in such a long time. They're trying to do too much too soon and they've slammed into a wall.