The game has a bit of an identity crisis. The main gameplay is stuck between open sandbox life sim but then many of the quests lock you into an almost CYOA/VN.
I personally like the exploration of the world and sim elements, but their are no stakes to push you forward in any direction until you already know what will happen and may have to replay the game entirely.
At the start of the second month you will be forced into an event string that leads to a boss fight, the problem is, for me it was literally the FISRT time I engaged will the combat system. Every other encounter up to that point I dealt with via dialog and skill checks.
Restarting the game, now knowing this, I looked for combat and for the most part you just have to grind the most basic zombie in a training room over and over to level up. The combat needs a rework or to be replaced entirely with 'puzzle encounters.'
Restarting also let me make different choices, some of which were wild in how much they affect the prologue. Picking your starting stats and character background are negligible in your experience of the game compared to the choice of how you react to not getting into a collage. It really feels like a stat sheet got tacked on to the start of a VN.
I think the world is well written/interesting and the systems are all decent independently, the game just needs to find a way to either meld them better of cut back on scope creep.
Goodluck to your development.
P.S. The devs patreon does appear to be focused on written work and a couple comics with the same fetish if you care, comics even free to read.
I personally like the exploration of the world and sim elements, but their are no stakes to push you forward in any direction until you already know what will happen and may have to replay the game entirely.
At the start of the second month you will be forced into an event string that leads to a boss fight, the problem is, for me it was literally the FISRT time I engaged will the combat system. Every other encounter up to that point I dealt with via dialog and skill checks.
Restarting the game, now knowing this, I looked for combat and for the most part you just have to grind the most basic zombie in a training room over and over to level up. The combat needs a rework or to be replaced entirely with 'puzzle encounters.'
Restarting also let me make different choices, some of which were wild in how much they affect the prologue. Picking your starting stats and character background are negligible in your experience of the game compared to the choice of how you react to not getting into a collage. It really feels like a stat sheet got tacked on to the start of a VN.
I think the world is well written/interesting and the systems are all decent independently, the game just needs to find a way to either meld them better of cut back on scope creep.
Goodluck to your development.
P.S. The devs patreon does appear to be focused on written work and a couple comics with the same fetish if you care, comics even free to read.