I absolutely loved the Cole episode, but I am a bit disappointed that there is no male incest route. (Considering now there's 3 girl routes and only 2 male)
Not gonna lie though, every time I hear that error noise too when rejecting a female makes you feel like you did something wrong, which feels kind of shaming.
Also
I think the player is supposed to be able to imagine the characters in whatever orientations they most favor.
If I recall correctly the player gets the wah-wah-wah error noise with Sam, not just with females.
Sam strikes me as primarily gay but just trying to fit in and be a nice, easy going guy, so more accepting and encouraging of het expression by his friends rather than actually being bi- himself.
... gay fan service.
With Anna she's painted as clearly pretty bi-curious despite her straight-laced religious upbringing.
... lesbian fan service.
I haven't played the latest update but I think with Cole the suggestion is that he can be interpreted as bi-, or even gay or trans, but "compensating" and living in denial of his latent same-sex and/or trans impulses. ... trans fan service.
Plus there's all of the Fatima and alien gang bang stuff (with lots of emphasis on male bodies, hence arguably gay fan service despite it being technically mostly het activity), and the demon futas (I don't claim to know what kind of fan service that is), the nuns with guns, the milfs, the dominatrices, the top and bottom gay prison cells, the steampunk loli, the hairdresser, etc.
I think issues of orientation and identity are handled about as well as a game-maker for a mixed audience can handle them. I don't think Rani's writing for a specifically gay or specifically het audience, and he presumably wants to create a game with as high a percentage of its content as possible that's playable by anyone, rather than having a game with lots of "no go" areas (ie. do not enter this game branch if het, and do not enter that one if gay). Obviously there are going to be some branches like that, but I think he wants to simplify development and make as few of those as possible while maintaining a diversity of fan service. I'm guessing that at least about 5/6 of his players are het ... so that kind of limits things. The kink and preference system he's come up with seems unique in these sorts of games and seems to be working really well. The fact that he's portraying the characters all as growing up on a backwoods planet ruled by religious fundamentalists, but part of a larger radically sexually libertine society, also adds a layer of interest and is a lens through which the characters and their preferences need to be interpreted.
