I tried this game because I'm pretty thick-skinned as harem fans go, and I've never minded the 'prostitute with a heart of gold who falls for the MC and becomes exclusively his' trope, which seemed to be what the comments were suggesting happens here.
Oh god
This is a monumental post. I'll try to address your points. Huge thanks for the insight, man. This is what I live for.
Waaaaaaay too much vpunch screen-shake.
I'll be adding a slider to let the player tone it down/shut it off in the next releases (just coded that earlier today). Maybe I should hotfix 0.1, too... It's a simple addition that makes all the difference, clearly.
Sorry for the exaggeration!
This is 100% on me. I'll evaluate de-escalating its abundance going forward, too.
Now, the sandbox bullet points:
- I intend to be very lenient on the ratio between "love points earned" and the amount of repeatable scenes a character may have.
For example: Mom will be having around ~14 unique scenes for the first relationship level, of varying kinds and detail. Even still, each scene may bump her love points by 10, or 15? This means that, by just interacting with her, you'll easily max (100) her points out before seeing all the scenes w/ her. The same principle should follow suit for all other girls.
- Level Up events won't immediately take place when you reach 100, too. It simply opens the option to trigger them, at will. This way, you can explore all you want before progressing, or just going for the level up as soon as possible.
- There will be extensive hints as to where characters are, at any given moment. Their avatars will show up in the thumbnails for the locations, for instance.
Other, more obtuse events, will be listed with a clear indication as to where you should go to trigger it.
- There will be a constant, ever-present time-skip button hanging at the top of the screen. You can use it anywhere, at any time. Passing time, moving around and navigating overall is meant to be as seamless as possible here. The same goes for the map and other navigation elements.
- You'll also be able to quickly warp back to your bedroom to get some sleep and skip the day, from anywhere, via the map. Sleeping, Time-skipping and moving around are all instantaneous, with no prompts or other bullshit interrupting you.
I never liked the fact that sandbox games have all these dumb, annoying quirks that should be very easy to work around and get rid of.
- Once again, the 'Phone' can also be accessed anywhere, at any time. That's where some more intricate hints will be, so I hope this covers these concerns... I really value the breadth of choices that a Sandbox allows, and I want to make it the least frustrating as I can.
I'll try to address the points you made about the story on a following post. You made compelling arguments, and I value all of that tremendously.
