New Feedback Pieces:
1. Yeah, the level of stereotyping going on with Yuki is really destroying the character. The fact that you gave her the last name "Ninja" was bad enough. But, the weird school girl tropes were just bad. Honestly the whole event chain and the character are kind of a dud for me. It's kind of hard to be aroused by such a caricature. You really gotta do something about it, because it's just not great and the charachter and her scenes are just wasted on the weird racism elements.
2. I think the core gameplay loop is better, but I still ended up feeling like it wasn't well intigrated with the rest of the game. You really should be building the events for Anna and Yuki into the system so it's more naturalistic.
3. This update really really badly exposed a problem in the writing specifically concerning how you write "stuck up" or "entitled" women. It was a little bit apparent with Leah in the last release.
Specifically, the new girl seems to have one mode and that's just "Stuck Up". There is never a scene where she's not angrily yelling at someone or insulting someone. There isn't even a Single Line of Dialogue where she isn't doing it.
The problem here is threefold.
A. Even stuck up people have different emotions. They react to different situations and people in different ways. They experience curiosity, or excitement, or interest, or boredom. They can display their emotions in more subtle or passive aggressive ways. They can be disinterested as opposed to merely antagonistic. They can respond positively to people who treat them the way they wish to be treated.
Her scene with Anna in particularly stood out to me in this respect. Such a character would not authentically be angry at Anna the way she is. She'd be above Anna. She might scold her, but the level of emotional intensity is not warranted.
B. There is a problem of emotional escalation. With Leah it's a bit better, because what you're doing is "softening" her behavior over time. But, even there her anger ramps up way too quickly.
In the case of the new girl, there is really just no relationship between events around her and her level of anger about it. She just goes 0 to 100 with no context. The end result is a feeling like she isn't reactive to her environment. There's a dangerous dance between making a character to quick to jump around emotionally, while still wanting to make them seem unstable. The goal is to create "Plausible Instability".
There needs to be more reactivity to circumstance and action, especially if you want to improve the *dire* state of player choice.
C. Something you're going to think in response is "I was trying to make her unlikable/a bitch". The problem is THAT'S NOT HOW AN ACTUAL BITCH ACTS.
Think about it? Do most bitchy or shitty people you know just get super mad all the time and shout a lot? Oh, they do it sometimes, but that's not really the prime attribute of such people.
The actual attribute I associate with people like Leah or the new girl is "Conceitedness". That is they just assume they're superior to the people around them. This is why shitty people often have multiple modes. It's because if people don't transgress against their mental self-image then they can respond normally to scenarios.
But, when people transgress, it's not right to shouting and insulting. It's normally passive aggression, snide remarks, or perhaps even ignorant negative assumptions about the other people. But, that's a layer too. It's only when the individual hasn't responded to those remarks by backing down or giving her what she wants that it normally progresses to shouting and outright insults.
This is also the importance of SOMETIMES including scenes where they aren't just being mean/shitty. If someone has one mode all the time, it gets tiring very fast. You need to construct the psychology of such a character and modulate their behavior to the psychology.
4. I liked the ability to see who is where. Improved the game immensely already.
5. I don't like that the "Ask About..." questions don't change. It feels like the answers, or perhaps the questions, should change a bit with time. The fact that Leah is still responding so harshly even after knowing that you're from the island is an example of it being jarring.
Furthermore, if you have it so that the fixed dialogue changes slightly in response to stats/game progress, then it allows players to use these things as a "barromaters" of progress. It also makes the player feel more like what they are doing is changing the gameworld/relationships.