Points that have already been mentionned, but I like to press :
- scene transitions - as it is now, it's too jumpy and confusing
- text box background - for readability
- lack of ingame context - avoid having the player just accept what's going on and moving on.
- animation
Points I saw and things I like to see :
- Small player choice that comeback later with little relevance. Like giving the player the option to hug their toxic familly, them being like wtf and commenting on it later or referring it. This would allow the player some agency without adding a lot of work. And since it's small irrelevant things they can be forgotten as they are relevent or lose relevance. If you follow with this I recommand you focus on what attitude the mc may take on the situation.
- To much irrelevant poorly explored ideas in short succession. Like, first, we are pitiful, then there is this caged demon, then we are isekai, then we are chained in hospital, then our familly hate us? But really, only us being pitiful and our familly hating us is relevant at first. From my understanding you're trying to apply the principle of Chekhov's Gun, but it's too much all at once. Try to spread them out and make longuer scenes.
The following is mostly what I like the first scenes to look like and accomplish as an exemple of making the scenes longuer and ideas more meaningfull and spread out.
- From what I understand the mc is suppose to be an opportunistic perverted dom that is scared by his previous life and doesn't want to fuck his second chance at life, but, at least at first, he will be suppress by his new surrounding and eventually adapt into a manipulative switch to make it his life's goal to max his lust. The problem is that, in the current version, he is just some pathetic orphan that doesn't want to fuck his second chance at like. In other world explore his personnality, perogatives, drives and goals more.
- The scene with the demon sitting in her cage sillently while the mc is being like "poor me I had a shitty life" would be a good opportunity to explore his normal/initial personnality and generally present the mc. I would recomdand that you let the mc explore a bit to show off his personnality and drive before he get isekai maybe by building himself back up and making the demon react when he affirm his core values (or new found values concidering he start down) maybe by expressing his perversion by touching the demon breasts making her twitch and isekai him as it happen in the current version. This last idea being that throught his sins/who he is the mc wake up the demon which I assume will lead, in time, to her being freed if evil or her becoming the mc familliar or partner in crime.
- Then we could have the hospital and the nurse scene which would set the rule of this new world with an early taste of what it's about. Aka, the nurse/doctor, as the first character(s) the mc have an oppotunity to interact with, should definitively be more then disembodied voices being sleep past and forgetten. Also, there should be a none human too to show that it's not just a gender role reversal world but a fantastic one too while we are still in the discovering the world and it's rule scene. They would be an excellent opportunity to have our first taste of what interpersonnal relationship without complexity look like in this world which should be the focus of this scene since interpersonnal relationships are the main arguments of this VN.
- Finally, there is the mother scene which is good, but previous revisions should make it focus on setting the mc perogatives (mc is suppress by his fears and adapting to this new world), short terms goals (fix your familly relationships) and the first arc (adapting to this new world). The introduction of the nurse/doctor should also allow Lex to focus on familly drama and suppressing/ being toxic to the mc over giving exposition.
- In short, focus a scene on exploring few core ideas and it's role of it's given context without rapid firing them (except if the rapide fire is an idea in itself).
Preamptif points :
- Make sur to think throught your flag system (save data) if you plan to have a "sandbox" style progression system. Those systems breaking down are usual the most common harmful bug to the player on f95zone outside of strait out crash.
- An integrated guide will go far in stopping players from being lost, missing content or following red hairng.
- Try to avoid pure white screans or you will flashbang players that are in the dark. Even making them lightly gray will go far toward not blinding people.
General advices :
- Respect karma, if a character wrong the player and is never punish for it or have poor justification to be forgiven, it will hurt there worth as LI.
- "sandbox" style progression system are all about giving the player the opportunity to chose which LI to progress as they will, but force a more episodic format like slice of life where events are short and not going on long adventures, but poor for "path games" where the player is meant to make multiple choices that will lead to an intended/planned outcome.
- You should give yourself a release schedual, but don't reveal it to the public until you are confidant that you can respect it if you ever intend to reveal it. If you're on over time, just cut what wasn't planned for the release and complete what you originally planned. You can reintroduce what you cut in future release. That will allow you to avoid spreading to much your efforts and updates. I recomand 1 to 3 months between story updates. Above that I forget the plot of VN, so I assume others start toforget around that time too.