I wasn't justifying my mistakes; I was explaining them. What matters most to me is understanding what went wrong. But you have to realize that entire sections of the game were designed this way, and it's too time-consuming and unnecessarily complicated for me to go back and redo everything.
Take the three weeks with Leslie as an example. They are now necessary for the family storyline, but initially, Leslie's storyline was independent from the rest. It was only later that I changed my approach, but I can't completely rebuild the game every time I realize a system is poorly designed.
The escape game was supposed to be the starting point for a new type of mini-game. That's why I invested so much time into it. If you've made some progress with Berry, you'll find a much simpler version (which, by the way, I've received no feedback on, so I assume it went smoothly).
You'll also notice that the affection system with the characters gets phased out as the game progresses. It didn't satisfy me. It’s the system that was replaced by the passage of days. You didn’t mention it in your critique, but having to spam the same dialogues to increase a stat (especially with Tracy, Lucy, and Leslie) is anything but fun. Now, you can choose to chat with the girls, sleep with them, or simply skip days to progress the story.
For now, my focus is reaching Phase 2 of the game. That step will allow me to reassess and adjust the game and its mechanics.
Even though your feedback is a bit harsh, I still appreciate you sharing it. That said, I'm sure you can express your thoughts without shoving someone's face in their mistakes.
For you sake, stop completely and work out exactly what you plan. Stick with that plan. You can't just keep changing game mechanics to progress the game, nothing good comes from that.
It also sounds like you are programming this in spaghetti code where everything is part of one file making changes a complete pain. If so check out Pirate Software discord. He has a section for game devs and it will help you out.
As to not noticing the affection system being dropped. How fucking closely with notes do you expect your players to be? Just cause it gets dropped by all does not mean when a character is done with it other we are still dealing with or the fact that people like me will keep building up the points ahead of time knowing we will need them to progress later.
I mean it's there all the way with Tracy all the way to end of her current progress. So check yourself on that.
I'm confused what YOUR goal of this game is. You have mentioned multiple things that don't align together. You are talking about how it's not making money which I take as your looking at this as a possible profession, then your talking about how it's too much work to fix things right now which makes this sound like your only doing this as a laugh which the quality does not matter but if you want it to be a business that will hurt you.
You mention wanting to get to phase 2 to get a better picture what you need to do to fix things here. That is wrong, you should already have the skeleton of phase 2 worked out and that should allow you to figure your stuff out now.
You really need the structure for the game figured out already, the decorations to it you can play with as you go. To put this another way your talking about building a house and fixing both the foundation and first floor after you have started building the second floor... You don't know if the structural support is suppose to be where it needs to be.
You sound like your building this house without any sort of blueprint, only a vague idea.
What I'm saying sucks, there is no sugar coating it. But at this point based upon what you said things are being held together with bubble gum and tape. What is the point of pushing forward just to find out your gonna be forced to redo what you have done later on when there is even more to be done.
I hope you can salvage what you have done so far once you figure out what you want to do, but it's going to be work regardless and the longer you go without a solid plan the more work there will be. Even with a solid plan you will still need to go back and adjust things.
I'm sorry but I think you bit off way more than you can chew for a first project. I don't want to see you give up on this but the way your going it's likely going to become too much as it seems your idea is keep moving forward.
I'm serious about stopping moving forward with the game for now. Check out resources about making games such as Pirate Software's discord and work out a plan for your game before moving forward again.
This game is damn refreshing idea and has solid look to it. But due to the indecisive plan has become a mess.
The farming game mechanics are solid, there is still some more room to grow with it.
The farm can be used more as a plot device in the stories, you can do both game mechanics and story by letting the MC hire people to work on the farm even if it's only two days a week or so. For example have the MC start pushing back against the Mayor by opening a stall on the farm where customers can buy directly, you stock the stall with veg you want to sell and X (random number) sell per day slightly above what Penny offers. Hiring people also then means you will have a need for continuing to make money as you will be paying them. Have Berry run it as right now her current shop seems underused (I don't know what your plans are so only offering a suggestion) This in turn can open things up to the two mentioned but missing aunts. Such as the one who has hired Berry being annoyed you poached her.
Having the LI's involved in the farm also can lead to having organic events with multiple LI's as their paths then cross there.
The family needs rework, there is no splitting hairs here. You started it down one path then shifted over and it's made a complete mess of it. I can agree with your thought an the path you want them now on but it NEEDS to be done from the start. The primary family needs to be considered as one unit for your story to work. This will still allow for Leslie to take the 3 week trip and allow for story progression with the rest without getting to far ahead with them instead of the current 3-4 week void there. I'm not saying something has to happen every day but a minimum of 2-3 events for the family should be happening a week and that is not much considering there are 4 of them which means a event per character every other week.
You do have something I think can become one of the better games out there. I'm not gonna bull shit you saying your gonna make a lot of money cause that will be very hard due to not being on Patreon due the the incest aspect. But I can still see you making a significant amount.
-You have solid looks to the character design.
-You have a good amount of LI's in the game some of which need more fleshing out for content but that will come with time.
-You have a little more room for more characters as LI's (Less than 5 IMO) but you can always introduce throw away characters if you want (random events where they don't have money but are still willing to pay in other ways), I think adding in the two Aunts would be agreeable to everyone cause in games like this more incest is always better.
-Your primary game mechanic of farming is solid and still has room to move the game forward.
-Your story lines are solid, it works with what the game is and offers enough meat to move it forward without it becoming over done.
-Ice breaker mechanic for the love scenes is interesting concept. I don't mind it so much but do think it needs a little tweaking in regards to the gallery. It's more work for you but whatever aspect you have unlocked should be available in the gallery right away, not waiting until it's all unlocked. I think I know why you did it this way but it sucks for the players when there are multiple things to unlock in a single scene just to get the replay. Without knowing how you programmed it it's hard to say how easy it is to enable what I'm thinking but If I'm right and your just reusing the scene as is and don't want people to use the hammer to progress while in gallery disable the hammer if the scene was triggered by gallery.
You have a lot of things you have done right.
I didn't find the affection system too tedious, it could use some polish and balance but was a good way to keep from blitzing story lines. It also gives people a visual of their progression. If you decide to go back to it a few suggestions I would offer
Have some actions give more such as certain dialogues, then have let's say working for them offer a little bit as well just so we are not forced to choose, I would suggest one point per day period worked. You had a pretty solid amount of affection needed to progress where you had to put in work but was not too tedious.
A suggestion for Rachel, have a dialogue option with Karen that let's you build affection points with Rachel during the week. Such as convincing Karen that Rachel needs her own space or not to be so hard on her type thing, have it behind a charisma check even or flip it around a bit and you get the point for Rachel regardless but if you pass the check you can also get one for Karen.
Boldness and Charisma are underused IMO. A simple thing to incorporate them more and ties into what I said previously is having dialogue / actions that give more affection points but have them locked behind checks vs these two stats.
Having multiple game mechanics is fine, so long as conditions are met. First it's not a throw away, next is i'ts applied across the board (Don't make a unique mechanic per character) an example I can give is the Journalist, the scoop thing feels off as is as there is no visual tracking for the character. Instead have scoops be a way of gaining affection, simple way that is already there for players to keep track of progress.
I'm not saying you have to stick with affection but keep it so it's easier for players to keep track of how they are progressing with the LI's if you plan on having pacing mechanics.
