I see a lot of people blaming Patreon for the changes to the game, and yes, many games do change direction because of this, but as someone who's followed this project for a while I would speculate that the changes are mostly, if not entirely, an effect of the developers shifting the game to better match their own vision.
It seems likely that the original direction of the game was a result of the developers noticing that RoR mechanics were "the thing to do" for side-scrolling porn games, and implemented those without thinking much of it. That is, until the game started to unfold and they realized it strayed a little too far from their ideal vision.
On one hand, good on the developers for following their own visions; many devs burn out because they focus on pleasing everyone until they're no longer interested in their own game. But it certainly does feel like a knife in the back to those who followed the game for its original direction, especially when the developers get to ride the wave of that initial popularity into the new vision.
And then there's the question of whether the devs were simply naive and dove into their first complex project with poor planning, or if they were outright exploitative and the initial direction was a deliberate marketing strategy. As much as I want to believe the latter to justify the feeling of betrayal over the direction change, it is admittedly more probable that all this is a result of the developers going into this project without a clear, concrete vision of what they want the game to be.
Doesn't absolve them by any means, but it's an easy rookie mistake to make. I just hope they learn from it and make sure to do proper, extensive planning and design for future projects.
