3) hehehehe! i watched it for the first time this year! desperately awaiting season 5, probs gonna start collecting the manga. i've been working on IC much longer but it DEFINITELY had an influence on me to some degree, haha. i aspire to its incredible level of shenanigans vs. excitement and i love the way it rock-tumblers all the characters around.
and hey good luck with your own project! throw me a link sometime if ya want ;D
5) yeah!! i think it's a fine approach depending on one's goals. the big thing i learned from my really old demo (and from playing other narrative games) was that once you prime a player with the idea that their choices could be deadly, they'll do a lot of the work of freaking out about it themselves. even if it goes okay, lots of players will feel like they probably barely scraped by or be afraid they missed an important hint, even if they were totally on the right track the whole time. i'm toying with the idea of maybe having one possible dead end in every chapter.