Leisure Suit Larry is a primary inspiration for this game, for sure. Even though I haven't played them in over a decade, I could probably finish Larry 1-7 without a walkthrough and without much difficulty. I remember when I downloaded purchased those games being told they were really raunchy... but they weren't really, even for the time. There's probably an argument that I'm subconsciously making the game I HOPED I was getting when I fired up LSL.
I agree that a few, focused love interests is best. The problem with a game that has presented itself as a harem style game is that any time you introduce ANY female character at all, the player will presume that they are "on the menu" no matter what they look like or whether we've met or seen them at all. Certain characters I added primarily to provide a villain (Charlotte, Andrea). Others I added so we could omnisciently see Meredith's inner dialogue and feelings about MC (Esmeralda).
With the development bandwidth I have available to work on the game, I probably should've (in retrospect) made a game that either a) focuses entirely on Meredith and the two aunts, or b) a game that establishes a clear delineation that "family" characters are the only ones you'll have the most "luck" with and that all non-family LIs are Larry 6-style cock teases/femme fatales that you will never be with.
That would definitely be scope creep, and a perfect example of what I was getting at above. The message you get from the house on the left (the stewardesses) was just a setup for perhaps my favorite joke in the game where MC says, "I wish I knew what it was like to live in a house with a pair of stacked blondes!" I don't remember what the message for the other house says--something about swingers, IIRC.
For the foreseeable future, it is extremely unlikely we will meet the neighbors, let alone have "relations" with them. When I finish the game and/or if the "team" grows, I may reassess. For now, I wouldn't hold my breath.
Cheers!
