Don't know if you're still looking for criticism, or advice, but I'll leave you with my thoughts.
(please excuse, any spelling or grammatic errors)
You have a pretty charming cast of characters, I'm interested in how you use the medium you have to tell a story, and hopefully, in a more mature story than most games of this nature tend to lean towards. Know that you can be serious without being gritty, though it's ultimately your choice, I hope you can see there are other ways of getting people to think about their choices and the implications of said choices, without breaking the characters both figuratively and literally. Side tangent I know we are talking about a game containing smut but personally love is a whole lot better than lust, but maybe I am just desensitized to sex, time does that to people. Another thing I understand it's called Love and Evil Things. I would like to see the dynamic in the choices; as of the start it is really just a choice between being a decent flawed human being, or an apathetic excuse of a human. Later on things seem to be a little better in that regard, though ultimately if given the opportunity I'd always choose the objectively nice option. I saw you mentioned something about not knowing what you want from the MC, I get that, if you ask me I'd say having a character BE a character and not just a fill in or a blank slate is best for narrative. Really you just need to connect your character to the story and reflect that with the choices of the player. We don't need to always agree with him, but we do need to understand him. If you were to ask me, I'd say you are doing a good job at that currently.
Writing wise things are great-ish. I enjoy the silly moments, allowing us the readers to breathe and get acquainted was a great feature. I understand you could've just jumped straight to the horror, in some form or another. Having hints of that horror was a nice touch and adding the pieces together as the story progressed was entertaining. Though I do feel that you sort of fumbled the ball with that whole Nobuko thing, mostly I don't feel too much for her. Maybe others are a little more caring than me, but I can't just seem to pull myself to feel for her other than what my natural empathy offers. But I think there are things I can draw onto, like the similarity of our situations. The MC seems to have trauma, and is currently having a battle for their soul, without being aware of said battle. Whereas Nobuko is more aware, and is currently being haunted by it, quite literally with her being dragged god knows where. I see the connections, but that may just be because of my background. Other than that the story is doing well for now, maybe that's because it has had some time to bake in the oven. If that's the case, I'd say keep doing that, meditate on your works before you send it out into the universe.
I love your work, it's nice being able to build that relationship between characters, especially in a medium that typically doesn't give two hoots about that. But I do. I know you have plans for your work, I hope you can see that through, and if nothing else I pray you can learn from this experience, and may it further you as an individual. God bless you.
P.S Chiyo is my favorite. I love that little gum drop. Please don't hurt her, my heart bleeds for them, and it'd fucking eat at me (that can be said for most of those little rays of sunshine).
