So anyway, with the controversial and stupid arguments out of the way, I finished the game. Pretty good.
Got a bit of critical feedback, although I'll start with a few nitpicky things: first thing that struck me was the music. Like, literally struck me: maybe it was because I already had a headache when I started playing, but that constant bass line thrumming made it worse until the only way I could keep going was to turn it down to a REALLY low level (didn't want to mute it completely because I don't like playing games in silence, or putting on outside music, which I'd find distracting). And it was just the one piece repeating throughout the entire thing. Another track or two during the pirate attack or the sex scene would have gone a hell of a long way.
Secondly, I was surprised that you were prompted to enter a last name for the player character, only for your first name to be fixed as "Reggie". Dunno what that was about. I get that Khern usually calls you "Cadet <last name>", but it's weird only being able to personalise half of your name- and normally when that happens, it's the FIRST name you choose. Should have just made him a fixed character with a predetermined name who we're playing as. Not a big deal, but odd. I assume Reggie isn't going to be the protagonist of '6000 Years From Home', but then I haven't read every post in this thread.
Thirdly, I think you might have been trying just a BIT too hard to make the names sound alien. "Qurelst" isn't too bad, but... "Ghrrerlian"...? That's a mouthful alright. You put a lot of effort into making the worldbuilding realistic, but unless the Ghrrerelians by some cosmic coincidence wrote in English even before they met humanity and that's how they spell it, I doubt we would have adapted the pronounciation of their species into written English with quite that many consonants.
Onto more detailed feedback: I agree with people who think the game was a bit too heavy on the infodumping, particularly the introduction sequence where you get a massive load of galactic history dropped on you. Yes, it's skippable, but since this game is about worldbuilding for the full game... skipping it is basically skipping the game (we weren't JUST here for the green pussy, after all). As others have suggested, a better idea would be incorporating it in a Mass Effect-style Codex the player (distinct from the character, who already knows all this stuff) can access from a menu at their own leisure. Khern, while an interesting and layered character in her own right, also came across a bit dry. It didn't feel like she was eager to talk about her species, like it's something she enjoys doing, more like something she just feels she has to do, like moving down a checklist, which was fine when you were asking her about shipping procedures, less so when you were asking about Qurelst culture. She's a very professional person (mostly), but I think it would work better if she more clearly enjoyed talking about her people, out of racial pride or something. In general she had a tendency to speak rather mechanically, which is probably deliberate because she's not an native English speaker (the bit where she talks about contractions was amusing), but it does make her sound a bit Vulcan-ish at times, when Qurelst are clearly supposed to be from more of the Klingon end of the spectrum. The worldbuilding is really well thought-out and detailed, though, which was quite impressive- although if the game it's setting up is meant to be taking place 6000 light years from known space, I wonder how important any of it's actually going to end up being beyond inter-species relationships between the starting characters?
Another thing was that the character conflict between the two of you was more than a little contrived. It struck me as a bit silly (and honestly feels like it struck Reggie as a bit silly too) that Khern would find herself on the verge of going berserk just because you accidentally said the word "pig" in a context which she is 100% aware was meant to be the opposite of offensive, to the point that it's jeopardising the entire trip and both of your jobs. So she's been doing this job with dozens of different humans for years and either no-one has ever said the word "pig" before (unlikely given how she immediately mentioned that EVERY trainee she's ever had has had to put up with her BO), or this has presumably already happened multiple times and she STILL has no better way of dealing with it? That bit was honestly very contrived. There was probably a more realistic way of getting Khern onto Reggie's cock. Would have honestly just been more realistic for her to come onto Reggie normally after the fight with the pirates, the way she'd apparently been intending on doing anyway. And honestly I think the game would have been improved with a bit more open sexual tension between Khern and Reggie over the time they're spending together so he's more obviously attracted to her by the time things come to a head, and it doesn't sound like he's protesting too much when he assures Khern that he does find her attractive.
Although the actual sex scene was excellent, albeit a bit brief and without some of the nice bells and whistles like animation, sound effects, and some different music which could have made it fantastic. While she's a matter of personal preference judging from other comments, Khern is just fucking gorgeous to me and the prospect of her being a love interest in 6000 Years definitely gets me interested in keeping an eye on that. Wouldn't have minded if the following 7 1/2 weeks of sex had been shown just a bit though, even in just a couple of still images, rather than glossed over in a brief bit of text at the end of it. Seriously, 7 1/2 weeks of constant sex, and we don't get to see ANY of the different places they found to do it? Particularly the shower sex. I love shower sex scenes. And actual shower sex, now that I think about it.
On a general technical sense (aside from the music), the models and environments were excellent- again, especially Khern. The settings really looked like what you'd expect the inside of an outdated space freighter to look like. Dunno if you were using stock Daz assets or something, I haven't played that many sci-fi VNs, but it looked like they'd had a reasonable amount of effort put into them. The custom text fonts for each character's speech took a bit of getting used to and initially I didn't like them, but they kind of grew on me by the end.
Finally, considering all the rather baseless controversy about Reggie being black, he was for the most part the best kind of black protagonist- one where the fact that he was black didn't actually matter (where you answer the question "Why is the protagonist black?" with "Why SHOULDN'T the protagonist be black?"). Although there were two points where the story brushed up against his race which stuck out. Firstly when Khern commented on humanity having a fictional species very similar to Qurelst (orcs) and compared it to the Qurelst ironically having their own mythical species of demons who resembled humans, whose skins were described as ranging from pink to dark, which was a bit odd, normally mythology doesn't include a lot of racial diversity in fictional species. It might have worked better if Qurelst also came in a range of hues and shades of green. I can see how the Qurelst having a mythological species of dark-skinned demons would have had unfortunate implications, and a race of pink/pale-skinned ones would have been comical (Reggie would have immediately said "so what's your point...?"), although maybe playing it comical would have been the way to go there. Secondly when she compared Qurelst being called "piggies" to if she called Reggie a "gorilla" because humans are descended from primates, then called Reggie out on denying that it would bother him. I don't think that worked as well. Thinking back on it, one thing that I didn't like about Khern so much was that, while she is obviously older and wiser and more experienced than Reggie, she came across a bit TOO much of a know-it-all at times- like there was nothing she didn't already know about humans. That little argument might have worked better if Khern had hypothesised about calling Reggie a gorilla while being UNaware of the historical implications of that insult to a human like him, and had been put on the backfoot briefly when Reggie quietly pointed it out to her. Honestly it just felt a bit too much like Khern was always right, about everything, all the time.
But in general, this was a good little read, with a HOT AS FUCK sex scene payoff. So yeah, as a teaser for 6000 Years From Home, I'd say it accomplished its goals pretty well.
