I played through about an hour of your game!

• Some feedback:
  • I like the experience this (visual novel?) gives. You play the role of the manager and you look at snail resumes and decide who is the best fit for each role. It gave me the perspective of a hiring manager. Sometimes there's a perfect fit for a specific job role. But most of the time, there's not, but you still have to figure out who would be the best to hire that day.
  • I liked the writing. There was a sense of mystery for what was beyond *the hole* (atleast from the MC's POV), but also that maybe there was something more out there other than human life and predators. I enjoyed managing the colony by talking to each department day-to-day. And also just simply asking Charon how their day was going was a nice option. I totally get that people need to be recognized as more than just a worker.
  • I wasn't entirely sure what the gifts did after each milestone. I did give them to the nerds at one point, but I don't think I progressed far enough to see what they actually do.
  • But at some point, I went through ~20 days, and I kind of felt like I was going through each day without any real meaning. I didn't feel a sense of progression, just looking at the end-of-the-day numbers going up (and sometimes down), and looking at resumes to determine the best fit.
  • Theme-wise: I think I understand what you're trying to do with the theme. You build connections by hiring snails, talking to the department heads, and coordinating them to increase output. But that's all it feels like. It feels like I'm just trying to increase the colony's daily output, rather than build a meaningful connection with each department head. And for the snails that are recruited that aren't the department head, they just become another faceless worker that I never get to interact with.

But those last points are a bit rough given the timeframe. And on top of that, I'm not really good at writing or describing what I feel exactly, so take everything with a grain of salt.

Considering that you got the writing and programming in within a week colors me impressed. I'd love to keep playing to the end if I had a better sense of progression and knew what I was working towards. The gameplay loop is fun, but if I have no clear end-goal in sight, then as a player I may lose interest over time. Regardless, I think you did a really good job on this!