I really enjoy the game and the writing is great. For me personally the thing that's missing the most is a little bit of agency, I want to have some impact on the scenes, be able to do things that change them. The pregnancy scenes for example should have slightly different writing, and if it already does then a bit more. More options during the scenes instead of Dante magically knowing the right choices.
Dante can do no wrong right now, all the girls are just entirely into him and I know thats essentially a plot point but it would be nice if we could effect those interactions more. Right now the gift giving system is just the perfect gift no matter what, if we could choose it might be more interesting.
Girls get pregnant at the snap of their fingers, but no children come along, the world often feels like it's at a standstill since you can't really impact it beyond playing the main story line, but the immediate pregnancy is a bit of whiplash.
Alice was one of the best scenes because you had to work for it, I'm not suggesting you do that level for every single girl in the game, that would be absurd, but a little more agency would go a long way I think.
Early on I was saving at conversation choices and eventually just stopped because I started to feel like my choices really didn't matter. The game was REALLY immersive until I realized that, and past that it was just kind of immersive. Ultimately, I find your writing really really good and it kept me engaged in the story, but eventually I was just doing the scenes for completion because they were a lot of the same.
Maybe something as simple as having multiple graphics per scene would add a lot of benefit. We also don't get enough kissing scenes in my opinion. At the end of the day I don't think the game is too vanilla as much as it is too samey in each scene, and with little impact on how the scenes progress.
Actually, I just realized that part of the disconnect is likely that the writing is not vanilla, but the graphics are fairly vanilla, in that it's a single scene and usually only a single cumshot per scene. OH, and also after scenes don't have any evidence of the deed despite it being written about. I distinctly remember writing about cum dripping on the ground without any in the graphic, it disappointed me.
If I had to pick one thing for you to change it would probably be to make cum persist after the scene so that you actually get a sense that something was done. Right now it's all in the writing. But that ties in really cleanly with what I said before, not enough agency, not enough observable aftereffects, not enough scene variation.
Hell, being able to choose to pull out just to see the girls disappointment would be incredibly interesting. Or send a cumshot their way just to see how they react. Dante is a gentleman but surely he can push boundaries a little bit right?
I think that's really what would make the game less vanilla feeling, choices and being able to observe the effects of them, good and bad.
Oh yeah, and girls having different emotional states that effect scenes, them getting lonely if you don't visit them for too long, mild jealousy from some characters maybe. I wanted to mention this a little earlier in the post but I kind of just wrote my thoughts, maybe I'll revise this post later so it's all articulated a bit better, especially since I'm back and forth between multiple different ideas and I'm not even sure which are the most important. I just know these are some of the things I feel like I'm missing out on.
Also I recognize that even just one of these would probably be a mountain to pull off, so don't feel like I'm saying you need to do all of them, or even one of them all the way through. There's always room for a sequel that expands and focuses on dating sim style aspects with character emotional state and dynamic events. For now I think I just want kissing, and cum to be visible after scenes. Oh and actually, full bodied portraits maybe, although that's just a petpeeve I don't know how much it actually matters regarding your current goals.
You've covered a lot of different fetishes, so I highly doubt that's whats missing. It's just the samey scenes, lack of agency, lack of variations in reactions (ties in with agency) and lack of cum permanence. MAYBE cumshots, but that's not entirely my thing, I know I'm missing out on oral focused scenes and kissing though.
If you want a concrete idea for another fetish to add, maybe bodyswapping, it already fit's the lore of the story after all.
Thanks for reading my long post, I really enjoy your game and it's great to see you putting so much effort into honing it into the best piece of art possible.
