It's my understanding that you're currently saving up for a good second computer to help with rendering needs, but how much would a cheap-as-dust, just-barely-good-enough-to-render-things computer help? The time savings might not be nearly as much as an actually good computer would offer, but I would think the headstart you'd get on animations by being able to start them in parallel with work that requires that requires your active attention would still be a decent amount of time saved - and since this would only be a "starter" second computer until more patrons notice your project, you could even consider buying something used to drive down the cost further. I'd normally never recommend buying
anything computer-related used, but since you're just looking to complete a dedicated task over a relatively short timeframe, it probably wouldn't die before you replace it - and even if it did, it'd still have been cheap and non-essential. You could probably get something suitable for under a couple hundred dollars, when we're talking about cutting this many corners just to get something that can help
at all instead of something that would really help things along.
That said, my opinion otherwise goes to "keep on as you are", purely because I'm happy and comfortable with the way things are, and selfish enough to prioritize my own desires. But that doesn't mean that
you are, and it probably sucks to not be getting the support you need.
I'm
theoretically fine with releasing in parts - there are characters I like more than others, but I don't seriously dislike anyone, and I'm the kind of content locust who will look for everything she can find regardless. It shouldn't meaningfully affect my experience with the game, even.
But... Even if it's not your intention, I've seen other developers who adopt this approach subconsciously end up giving more care and attention to certain paths that were more popular or easier to work with or ended up being more interesting for them to work with. When you're working on full chapters, it's easy to switch from one character to another if you're feeling a bit worn out, but that's not possible when you're working on a narrower section, and it can end up showing in the results. Not to mention that some particularly weird forms of player behavior might end up falling through the cracks a bit if the game is being implemented in a more modular way instead of the current chapter-oriented design.
Are these things that are
likely to be a problem? Probably not - but they're the kind of risks that occur to me when someone is considering changing how their project is designed.
As for marketing... Well, I already mentioned I'm selfish, right
? But joking aside, I'm also not entirely certain how well marketing would work. The places that you could normally reach out to don't generally handle adult content (and are themselves saturated as well, and generally have more money to advertise with), while the places that
are willing to handle adult content generally place less value on plot and might not appreciate the slower buildup of the game. The game stands quite well in its entirety, but it's a lot harder to find an easy, attention-grabbing hook for... Except for maybe the sci-fi aspect, since that's a bit of a bluer ocean at the moment.
EDIT: O... Oh, I wasn't supposed to reply here? Well, then, I'm not sure you should take advice from someone with my reading comprehension issues...