Hey guys, first of all, thanks for the feedback some of you provided. I see that the main complaint people have about the game is that it lacks pictures/gifs. The reason I did a text-based game in the first place, is to not be influenced and restricted by what pictures/gifs I find, I wanted it to be story driven, rather than content(?) driven. But it is not a problem to add some. It creates some difficulties though, for example consistency of characters. I cannot possibly expect to find each and every gif I need according to what I wrote and have them all feature one actress in one scene. But as long as visual consistency isn't an issue, I can just add whatever gif is suitable for an exact instance. I guess I'll add some gifs in the next update, and we will see how it goes.
Speaking of Casting Director. I played through it and definitely see where people might think it is a rip off (the take advantage of girl/how to deal with consequences part), and if you think so, the only thing I can do is to continue developing the game and let you guys judge for yourselves. However, now comes the part where I'm really tempted to "borrow" some of the design choices from there. I initally thought of making more linear kind of game, but I like how Casting Director's dev handles multiple plotlines. I planned to make them intertwined, and influencing each other based on players choices, basically happening at the same time, with some paths/variations gated behind player choices, but keeping them separated and just making them influence each other via some variables seems like a simply better way. And if you don't like some of them, then just ignore them. But then, if I really go freeroam/sandbox way does it mean anything for my game to exist? At this point it will really turn into a rip off. Also there is an issue of Casting Director's dev being a far superior programmer than me. Well, it is more like me not being one. But having an opportunity to see how these games actually work is good, I can't believe I didn't consider reverse-engineering someone's game as means of learning how to code.