There are some people against sandbox games, but there are plenty of sandbox games that are successful (summertime saga, harem hotel, dark magic, corrupted kingodms, etc). I think it all depends on the type of story you have in mind for the game. If you're planning on having a more linear story with a small cast of characters, then it's probably better to have a more classic VN style game. If you want lots of characters to interact with and you want the player to have the power to choose which characters he interacts and the order by which he does that, then a sandbox game is the better option. As for the characters, I don't mind how they look some have very similar hair styles but I don't think that is a huge problem. For future releases, I think one of your priorities should be reworking the story and the character events. Right now all the girls feel the same and are just horny all the time, even characters like Lois who is supposed to be shy, she after just a few interactions with the MC decides to have sex with him even though she is still a virgin. Or Lauren for example she has a talk with the MC explaining how her ex bf almost raped a girl and then she is like "oh btw do you want to have sex"? Having a large number of sex scenes is good but if there isn't any real build up to them, they feel meaningless, and make the characters feel very shallow.
Thank you for your response. I do plan to one day have a plethora of characters which the MC can interact with. The proposed partial sandbox mechanism would be very basic, and just present a menu with a list of the characters and who they want to interact with, to reduce the need for clicking around the house.
Regarding your second point, I’m going to make sure to select a different hairstyle for the next character to appear in the homeshare lol. But on a more important note, I believe I mentioned it before, but I would poll for how characters are going to look so they are more community inspired if that makes sense.
And for your final point, regarding the characters storylines, you are 100% right! Frankly, if the story would continue from this point, the story would honestly be a bit shit. The idea of joining a homeshare with strangers and immediately having sex with them is not the path the game should take. Rather, I wanted to showcase the characters and their respective H-scenes in such a way which there was some story between the scenes, to allow the characters to have some meaning and rapport. For me to have fluffed out – for example – Lauren’s section to the degree I wanted, I would have about 8 chapters for her story and released the game without as many H-scenes. However, I wanted to showcase a plethora of H-scenes with the first release, and that did, unfortunately, mean I cut some corners in the storytelling for now. Concerning Lois, I want to have more scenes before you actually have the chance to have sex with her, where you get to know her character better and have a meaningful relationship built up between the MC and Lois. However, as with Lauren, I would have released the game with most likely no H-scenes for Lois, which I was not really a fan of. Hopefully, you can understand what I mean.
I want to thank you for your feedback though, it is really important at such an early stage of the game and helps reinforce the roadmap the game needs to follow. It is greatly appreciated
