A pretty good game clearly undervalued in terms of support and monitoring. Every day I understand people less. There are games out there with much less quality in story with much more success than this one. Right now, even if I had an artificial intelligence working for me to make a game, I would have no idea what parameters to enter to be successful. Most of the time it seems random.
edit - Now I'm home so i'll flesh this out...
It is random to a degree, but mostly it's a formula.
Attractive characters
Likeable characters (distinct things)
Consistent setting
Understandable MC
Thematic story.
Attractive and likable characters are because each character you add is a chance to appeal to the consumer. Likeable doesn't have to be positive either, you can have a villain or side character that people "love to hate" and that still qualifies. But attractive is to appeal physically and likeable is an emotional appeal in general and you need both or the character is tolerable and forgettable. peoples interests vary but they are generally clumped, not fully random even on an individual basis.
Setting... doesn't need anything amazing funny enough. You just need to be consistency with your setting. Don't establish things you will later contradict because ideally your consumer will get invested in the story and every setting change, every subversion of expectations... is a good chance for the consumer to feel lied to. It's better to be totally predictable than it is to have a bad plot twist. A good twist though is beast, but is hard to pull off so it's a question of risk.
Mc... you don't have to have much here frankly, you just need to have them act in ways that make sense. Even in a choose your own adventure format each option available has to make sense in what you have shown of the character already. Narrative is the vehicle by which you reveal things not decision or action points in stories.
Thematic story is the biggest dice roll. Pick a theme that interests you and try to do it justice. Part of it is how well you tie everything else together but there's so much under the hood that this one is the closest to "random" you get. It's not really, but it might as well be until you get good at telling a story.
overall the random factor to story is essentially exposure which is only pseudo random. How well you reach the target audience is a factor of that too, so really its just exposure... and thats somewhat random but not really. the randomness to it mostly is that you can blow up without trying.
on the topic of little regina this is my entirely subjective analysis with the statement that i /like/ the game thus far though i havent seen the latest update yet, but was otherwise caught up i believe... though its been a little bit. because only the primary two love interests (jessie and christa) and the MC have been fleshed out to any real degree, those are the only three characters i will address.
critical analysis is frequently taken personally and poorly so i'm going to try and keep my opinions distinct from what seems to be empirical reality... and keep my actual opinions out of it as best i can. i am only doing this to give a benchmark for what i said above in context of a game that you have played and maybe the slim chance that its addressed intentionally or not as the game goes on.
attractiveness -
specifically the first two romantic interests shown are absolute polar opposites in terms of taste. on one hand, you have a redheaded piper perri, and on the other you have she-nan the barbarian. no issues with this but most people are going to heavily favor one or the other.
likeability -
character depth is good, with the player being given ample reason to like jessie almost immediately, if for no other reason than she is absolutely adorable. this is counterbalanced by her tendency to play machiavelli which most people do not like.
Christa on the other hand... christa in a nutshell is a proven danger to herself, jessie and the main character. she is also proven to have absolutely no loyalty /to/ the main character, developed or otherwise. the source of all of that is because she is incredibly insecure and frankly the weakest character of all the ones shown as a direct contrast to her physical appearance and apparent overall ability.
consistent setting - i do not see any inherent contradictions so no reason to really comment here. looks good.
understandable MC - starting off with a background was a solid way of building up a somewhat broken main character. it gives people the ability to understand why his reactions to certain things as in general a particular skillset doesnt need to be explained no matter what it is. so nothing really to say here.
instead i will give a general example - what i mean by a particular skillset is just that, a limited skill. it is assumed that everyone is going to have interests and a personal history, so even without going into why its understandable that someone knows about mechanics, computers, languages /or/ business. if you give a character too many skills however, you /must/ have a good explanation of why.
Story -
so far the story is about a bunch of broken people taking a bad circumstance and healing from it (a personal favorite theme of mine)... on the other hand the only one who is actually shown to be healing is the MC. Jessie's big flaw is her manipulation of everyone around her, but the primary change she has shown is a loyalty shift and an aggressive protectiveness towards the MC. thats not a big deal as her flaw isnt much of one realistically, but it is worth noting.
Christa not only is not healing but actively getting worse as the story progresses, going from low key paranoia with the built hobo who "just happened across two vulnerable girls" to flares of high level aggression and violence specifically towards the MC, back to what most charitably can be described as betrayal by inaction but more accurately is her actively betraying him and putting him in a circumstance where the likely outcome is harm up to and including death for everyone around her.
overall its not a bad game and has most everything covered that i mentioned, but /if/ i am correct in analysis and experience... you can sort the audience by who prefers christa and who prefers jessie... and of those who prefer christa, i would imagine most wouldnt stay as is. the ones who like jessie, some portion of them will leave from frustration with christa.
as to the storyline elements... its not advertised by its story, the synopsis says little to nothing about any of the characters nor the trend of the story beyond 'getting involved with each others messes' so the primary draw is going to be aesthetic, not narrative.
the easiest way to draw more people is to highlight the story better on the original post i think... but what would be harder to do is fix christa's narrative sooner rather than later, because theres not much reason to stick around specifically for her, but there is reason to bail because of her.
analysis basically over and i will restate out of abject paranoia and the fact it sounds otherwise - i like the game. i understand the characters well enough and why they are why they are in terms of what has been shown thus far. it makes sense and i've zero commentary on that basis. and finally i /like/ the characters well enough to continue playing and be hopeful for the story progression.
