I really like all the characters, their models, and the animations... too bad the gameplay makes it really fucking hard to see these scenes.
First off, the (normal) menu is disabled and instead gives you a phone menu that you have to open with right click (yeah, so obvious that it doesn't even appear in the tutorial it gave). While obtuse and broken, it's not the worst I have seen. It's got a fast travel system, a relationship screen, and a load option... but no save option.
Like really, what good does it makes to limit when and where you can save?
Not that there's any challenge besides walking around, nor does it affect the progress of the game. It's natural that players want to see different outcomes, why makes it such a hassle that you can only save in your room? While there exists a fast travel, it's still so finicky that it makes you wonder "why can't I just save right away"
Yeah, the place is huge as shit, if you wanna walk, you'll be spending the entire year of your life wondering where the hell you should go next because the navigation sucks dick. Since the fast travel only takes you to main locations, it doesn't help you with specific locations like someone's room, or the freaking hallway where they work.
Why isn't the objective screen tied to the phone menu, really? Do I have to go back to the room everytime I made progress and had no idea where I'm suppose go or what to do. The hints it give you is stupidly vague as well "I need see Wendy for the key to the pool." Well smart guy, I have several questions like where's Wendy and when should I go find her so she doesn't greet me with generic dialogue like "the weather is nice"
This isn't because the developer has ESL, this is a fundamentally bad navigation if I can't find her even with fast travel. Especially whn the "objectives" could easily be a quest menu than something you need to see at a freaking desk!
All of this is worsen by the fact that most of the events are randomized, meaning that there's no specific schedule that characters follow, or where they go during the day exactly that you can keep track of, and the time keeps flowing, so the characters keep changing where they go before you can even walk there while you grasp the directions.
Yeah, there's a real time flow, each minute is one hour in this game like how it works in Last Hope, but crappier. This sucks so much that I wish the developer wouldn't bother designing such of bullcrap system and instead just opted for "each event passes the time" like the other games did.
Sure, it's an alpha, but the development started since Sep 2022 to the time writing, Nov 2023. That's entire year and 2 months to fix these fundamental problems I should mention, it's awful how the developer thinks nothing of the design and kept it all the way to how it is now. Which disappoints me, since this could've been a really good game.