Bonhomie and
79flavors
Here's a summary of how routes and choices are supposed to work:
Entirely separate routes will only happen in about the last third of the game. Anything else would mean I would develop several games at the same time.
For now, there is 1 main story branch that everyone follows. When I refer to paths, I mean temporary parallel content that you enter depending on your choices. Those paths merge back to the main story branch after a scene or two. In addition, your choices are reflected in the dialogue and the thoughts of the MC. There are scenes in chapter 2 where I've written 5 different variants of the MC's thought for example.
The choices you make I track individually. There is no permanent score of any kind. For example, the start of the second day will differ depending on whether or not you decided to try to peep on Anja. The way Heather will behave toward you when you see her the next day will depend on how you treated her the night before.
Some major choices will have long lasting consequences, others are 'payed-off' and then mostly fade away. But they never add any kind of permanent points.
It was always supposed to work like that and hasn't changed.
The adjustment I've made is about the "soft" enforcement of character consistency in chapter 1, i.e. you only get the choice to "push" Heather into breaking down if you made somewhat "forward" choices during the day. My reasoning was that it would break immersion if you played your MC to be a bit "meek", and then suddenly get the option to deliberately be an asshole to Heather. But the downside was, that there's obviously no logical connection between your choice to knock on a door and your desire to tie up Heather, so I now consider that design a mistake. From now on, the only way a preceding choice can restrict any subsequent choice is if there is a real, logical connection between them. Say, you only get the choice to tie someone up if you bought rope the day before.
That does mean that you can behave wildly differently from chapter to chapter, and if you do, your MC will most likely read a bit schizophrenic. But that's up to you. If you make somewhat consistent choices you will get a consistent character.