I think it's a little early to write a review so I'll just dump some impressions here. I like almost everything about this game except for the actual gameplay aspects of it. I think the atmosphere is great, the character models, the music, the effects, the jump scares (though they get a little repetitive), it's all very nicely put together. My three problems with the game are the navigation, the RNG nature of almost everything, and the writing (or lack thereof.)
The navigation menu isn't very well thought out and implemented, some things take way more clicks than they should and it doesn't help that a bunch of events like jump scares, looking at the pentagram and sleeping close the menu for some reason, adding even more unnecessary clicks. Like, it shouldn't take 6 clicks to use the computer from the living room (Research -> Interact -> Computer -> Interact -> Yes -> Bootup animation you have to skip -> You are finally on the desktop) when it's literally right there on screen and you could just make it clickable. You also shouldn't have a navigation menu that switches the order of rooms depending on where you are, ensuring that you never get used to the menu and will have to scan through it every time. IMO navigation in VNs works a lot better with clear visual cues than with text menus. Related to this: the computer is also kind of a hot mess that could be streamlined, like you have a whole big ass desktop but we have to dump options in terribly named subfolders like "My Stuff" and "System"?
The other problem I have is that it's too hard to actually progress in the game when everything you do is apparently a coinflip. Like, the game is just RNG overload. You can seemingly be doing everything right, the pentagram is pink, your last interaction with ghost girl was positive, but then she shows up again and everything you do just leads to her smashing your face in and running away fails four times in a row, because sure, why not. When, where and how often she shows up is naturally RNG too, which leads to situations where you want her to show up and you can switch between rooms 20 times with no luck (why not use the Ouija board to literally summon her instead of just for cryptic messages?) while at other times she beats your ass and you run away only for her to immediately show up again in the next room. She can even leave and before you can click on another room she shows up again ???? Bitch needs a cooldown or something.
I'm not a big fan of RNG in general, but even if you are, I think it's not really debatable that the systems in this game need some severe tuning to make them less annoying/punishing to the player. I'm also kind of baffled by the idea of giving the entities randomly generated likes and dislikes. It just feels a little too game-y to me. Like, aren't the entities supposed to be actual characters with backstories and personalities? It's weird to me to insert this kind of roguelike randomization into the way a character behaves.
There are also some bugs. The save system doesn't really work how you expect it to, I think saving during an encounter and loading that save just dumps you into the room like it never happened. The photo system has a bug where if you've taken a photo that day and go to the PC and check the status of yesterday's photo it will reset today's photo and you have to go take it again. But then when you try to upload that photo it says you already did, idk, it's all a little janky.
Overall I don't really know what to think about this game. Maybe I'm just confused as to what type of game this is trying to be, but to me it felt very light on actual writing or relationship building. I guess it's kind of related to the whole RNG aspect, it's hard to have a coherent or progressing story/relationship when everything is just doled out in random snippets that could change from positive to negative in an instant because the coin came up heads. It all feels somewhat disconnected and arbitrary when ghost girl can go from asking you to fuck her in the ass to beating you up no matter what you do or say. It also felt incredibly anti-climactic for the sex scene to have no writing at all. I'm really not a fan of the "just watch the animations" school of sex scene writing.
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