Unfortunately yes, the way the game is structured, you can’t just do one route, you’ll find that most of the characters routes are interconnected and you have to complete one section of one character to complete a section of another.Did I have to follow the walkthrough exactly cuz I did the Mom path first and got all the way to the dad showing up and the walkthrough makes it seem like I had to do every character around the same time i'm asking this because i'm tired of looking at the walkthrough for everything and the game is kinda buggy so i'm scared I might have to make a new save
And if miss a step or you progress too far with certain characters, it can mess up the game and make it buggy.
My advice it you don’t want to start a new save is to check out the link in my signature.