What perplexes me is that there are like a thousand "games" on this site that are not actually games at all. They are merely choose your own adventures (at best). But every single time a game actually attempts to be a game by adding game elements dozens of people complain about grind and give these games bad reviews. Why not just go read one of the visual novels, or better yet one of the kenetic novels? Instead people complain about a management game having management in it, or a sandbox having sandbox. It makes no sense. It would be like if I went to a coffee shop and bought a coffee and then complained to the barista that there was coffee in my coffee.
Well, i don't agree.
First:
In its core this is not a management game.
It's still limited sandbox with a slim vn story as a red thread and gamey management elements sprinkled on the surface to give the illusion or appearance of it being a management game. Dragging mom to the kitchen isnt really managing anything in my book and there is mostly no real choice of whom to use for what and when anyway therefor where is no choice there is no gameplay and no management.
In reality all you do is go through fixed events a certain amount of time to get to the next stage of events.
You could realize this in a vn with repeating loop and simple ab or abc choices as it has been done already, no draggin little icons and gamey interface needed and you would experience the exact same thing or story to 99%.
All of the time cycle animation and dragging chars around and the cooking is just filler or in the end not much more if you would go from locataion to location at a certain time in a sandbox.
There exists btw a very similar project with an chinese whorehouse setting that shares a lot of the same elements made in renpy.
I do have a respect tho for the work Farin as creator put in this and its a nice experiment or lets say evolution of a sandbox experience, but comparing this to actual management gameplay of any sort, would be compare
water grapefruit juice to whine imo. And i dont believe that his view will differ much when it comes to the design of the project.
It is also already evident by the planned pure vn mode that is announced that the sandoxy gameplay is just a way of diffrent presentation of that set story.
And that doesent make it bad or anything i dont complain about that. I just wouldn't call this a management game.
The only porn game that fits that description is lab rats and even that is quite limited in its scope due to it being made by one man in renpy.
Second:
I don't think that complaining about grind is equal to complaining about it being a game,vn or sandbox.
A grind complaint can be about time spent and clicks made vs. reward balance and is independent of the preference of design.
People are complaining about vn s with little "content" all the time the just dont put it under the grind category in name but it still falls directly in it. Its also very subjective as everyone has diffrent levels of tolerance to repeating events or its rewards.
Porn is more addictive than cocaine, that's why people are willing to pay for subpar gameplay and stories all around as they get off on the exciting and enticing parts. And btw teasing is part off it, teasing isn't nonsexual. I really wish that some people would get that into their heads, because hat makes basically 99.89% if not all of all projects released here based on sexual gratification in one way or another.
Also grind complaining as feedback is valid as long as it's done in a certain manner imo and does in any way more good than harm. I think for example that this project would be easily fixable with a lot more filler "content" from the beginning and probably just more in the end. That wouldnt make it a better management game if one at all but at least it weren such a waste of time in my eyes. And a bad review might spare the dev even from more bad posts and complaints as someone that does read them may stay clear if red flags for that person were mentioned.
