I don't think you need to be a dev to say that the time put to the free roam features is not worth it.
Back when I first started dabbling in game dev, I wanted to do a full open world. Just setting up LOD textures and choosing their swap distances was dozens of hours in itself, let alone modeling tons of buildings and scenery. And for something like Orc Massage, it can't really offer anything except to distract from the core of the gameplay loop, which was already fine on its own. This game is in development hell now, and has only its creator to blame.
