I see where you're coming from, but I think the problems (if you want to call it that) with Making a Mark isn't quite that simple.
For one, many people are put off by the CS talk, which I get and I wouldn't expect people to love it if they don't know what the fuck is going on. Two, the sandbox games are not super popular, there are some people, like me who enjoy them. Three, the fake looking tiddies put some people off, which I understand too. Four, the writing could be a lot better. Five, Mark being too odd for a lot of people.
It's admittedly been a very long while since I actually sat down to play your game, but I'll offer you my detailed thoughts on that to the best of my recollection:
1. No doubt all the CS talk was a engaged interest miss with the general audience as a whole you are going to find playing these types of games.
2. Sandbox games aren't super popular, or by and large generate a lot of distain feedback comments here over being such, because they are sandbox games. Sandbox games get the hate they do because of what's basically almost a default new dev decision to always tie such into the inclusion need of repetitive scene grinds and artificial "getting too far away from what the player is really after here" time sink elements. With most never completely grasping the simple principle that there *are* better and much more unique ways to add sandbox'y elements to your game that don't include just endlessly copycatting the same energy/food/money model aspects that has never in itself played up as positive point towards why people ended up liking a game. That, and if players are spending 1.5 hours of a supposed 2 hour content update clicking around or grinding some stat up, you never get bonus time spent points out of that from most people sitting down to play it. The game will ultimately always have been better off sticking to a shorter 30 minute update format (even if/when that gets it's own complaints) where the player was at least seeing the story content pushing forward in some non-artificial manner with every step they took.
At the core and by differing tastes in content nature, imo a sandbox formula in itself will always be the more ideal delivery system for any game looking to deliver a wide variety of desired content....but only if done right and without the mostly universally undesired elements. Which again is rarely ever the case...so hence the hate. I actually want to recall thinking that from a pure presentation standpoint you got a lot of the core elements in your's right. Nothing overly complicated about clicking around from a single screen, keeping it super simple indications that a girl is here, ect. You just made the same cardinal sin mistake pretty much everybody else does by adding a too drawn out layer of grind feel to it, and which for a lot of people basically ended up defeating everything you did get right.
3. Tastes on that are always going have a subjective variable going in to them, but I will say this. Your big but never overly cartoon'y sized fake tit and skinny girl models wasn't one of this game's issues. If anything it was it's strongest point (especially at the time it came out), and likely the #1 reason (by far) it even got as many plays/downloads as it did or why people played through the grind. Could it be polished up to better meet increased standards today? Probably. But that game development decision was basically the equivalent of putting chicken parmesan on an italian dinner menu. Sure, there might be vocal people out there pointing out that they don't prefer chicken, or how they like a more natural and non carnivorous diet, but by and large it has the best definitive track record of hitting that universal appeal note among the most people sitting down to eat an italian meal.
4&5. Like I said it's been a while so with this specifically my mind is a little fuzzy, but as noted previously I remember the game reading in clear english. So that in itself is huge pro point to the writing. Whether the MC lacked that extra layer of personality I don't recall though, as to be blunt it wouldn't of mattered much anyway since you essentially conceding that additional layer of my interest away once you went down the road of centering the entire storyline theme around incest.
As I've pointed out multiple times elsewhere over the last year+ while game development on this stuff has been evolving forward: You can make a game that has a deep and engaging story that stands out on it's own over a sea of constant copycat formulas being pushed out on the daily. You can also make an fun to play incest game. You can't have both when the latter doesn't actually resonate on that type of deeper level among a lot of people who will play an incest game for the jerk off sex scenes, but most of whom don't actually do so under some literal fantasy mental image interpretation in their heads that they are screwing their own mom or sister.
Like the recent trend of some higher production value game efforts trying to combine mens' Don Corleone fantasy appeal to a character that a few scenes latter finds themselves trying to screw "mommy", and which then finds the dev 6+ months latter wondering why all that effort isn't paying off with more total interest they assumed would be there...trying to combine a legitimately deep/emotional/engaging story with a strong incest angle is again the rough equivalent of offering people a ham and peanut butter sandwich. Which most people are just going to conclude that the taste notes are too conflicting and that it simply doesn't go well together. It's the worse initial mistake a story aimed at being "more" can make nowadays. Just like any incest game that tries to take itself or it's presentation too seriously is the worst mistake it can make. Times change, and the formulas that might of worked 2 years ago don't have the same surrounding variables going in to their likelihood of being deemed successful anymore.
