Sorry for the wall, haha. Anyways, obviously, someone correct me if I'm wrong about any of this, but here we go. So, basically, any evil action Guy does increases his own dark points which influences his inner thoughts and reasoning and things like that. I
think it also opens up certain actions, i.e. in Pepper's interrogation scene, I don't think you can do certain (bad) things unless you have enough MC dark points (MC dark points are separate from individual LI dark points). But, that seems to be the extent of it. I guess Neon mostly uses it in order to make Guy's thoughts align with his actions, as it would be weird as hell if he's thinking wholesome thoughts even after he's graped Ashe, Viola, & Pepper...
On top of that, each character has happy points and dark points as well as a relationship status or 'route'. Happy points are pretty self-explanatory, as it reflects how much they like you, but what some people may have missed is that not only can happy points open up options to the MC, it can also influence the likelihood of a character forgiving a.. let's say less-than-nice action. For example,
in the changing room with Gabbi, you can try to finger her ass; if she doesn't have enough happy points, she won't like it and it'll come to a stop pretty quickly; on the other hand, if she does have enough, she will end up liking it and even reach orgasm. In that same scene, she gives you the choice of cumming in her mouth or on her tits; you can instead choose to cum on her face and, similar to the other action, if she isn't happy enough, she will be angry and cry; but, if she is happy enough, she will instantly forgive you and seem to have no problem with it "that's ok, I trust you daddy." It's honestly fucking great and is effectively a toxic subroute of romance (and corruption/findom as well? I actually haven't tried that route yet on a playthrough, so I'm not sure how available happy points are on it). My prediction is that successfully cheating with multiple girls will rely heavily on this
(i.e., whether they trust you and believe your lies or not, give you benefit of the doubt, etc.)
Dark points (for the LIs) I'm less sure about tbh. Maybe my memory is bad, but I don't recall what actions, if any, were changed or opened up with dark points with any of the girls. It's possible he hasn't utilized them as much yet, I just don't remember. If happy points reflect how much they like you and are willing to forgive mistakes or toxic behavior, the logical flipside of that is dark points reflect how much they hate you and perhaps how likely they are to jump on mistakes or further toxic behavior; or perhaps how much control/domination you have over them and how likely they are to be afraid and allow you to do evil things without complaint? Not sure.
And I guess the relationships/routes are also pretty self-explanatory. In general, you have friend, romance, corruption/findom, and evil/sadistic/domination/grape/whatever else people have called it up to now. Some girls have more routes and I have no idea what they entail; I guess they're branches from the general routes, i.e. Nicki apparently has a toxic romance route according to another comment. So, I guess to finally sorta attempt to answer your question about route switching, I
think Neon's plan is to either add another route for situations like that where it makes sense, or to specifically add a variable that gets checked, i.e. whether you switched from corruption/findom to romance, or romance to grape, etc. I'm guessing for route switches that entailed something very meaningful (whether good or bad), it would get reflected in the character's behavior and dialogue, at least for a while. Like, it's hard to believe that the straight romance route should get the exact same reaction and dialogue as someone who switched from the asshole/findom route onto the romance route (assuming that's possible for anyone). But, for other route switches, it might make perfect sense to more-or-less have it the same, i.e. friend to romance vs romance off-the-bat seems like there wouldn't be much of a meaningful difference other than the character referencing it here and there, i.e. friend-to-romance "took a little bit, but I finally saw what made you so great" versus romance-from-the-start "it was love at first sight". Or if the romance route had 1 or 2 extra sex scenes, the friend-onto-romance route would reflect the lack of those events. Stuff like that, probably.
So, as you can see, it's all
very complicated and can understandably get quite confusing
But, that's honestly what makes it so, so good and gives it an
amazing replay value. It's possible Neon will change some of these things in the chp 1 revamp, as he said he's going to streamline stuff and add code references to specific actions (for example, whether you did anal with Nicki, or just oral, etc.). Don't know if he plans for that to replace happy points and (LI) dark points in any significant way?
