Holy crap what a review! Thank you so much - I really hope the rest of the game lives up to your high praise! :)
The funny thing is that I'm using the same dialogue/quest assets as DE, which in turn means that there will be a lot of similarities visually, but I am doing my best to differentiate it. In general, the comparison to DE is both a blessing and a curse, since it both gives people an immediate idea of what I'm doing with Clam, but also puts me in direct comparison with one of the best games of recent years. :) I think one thing that worries me the most is people taking a quick look at the game and writing it off as a DE ripoff and nothing else, but we'll see. Hopefully, I can keep it interesting and different enough.
You know, originally there *were* more stats - Confidence, Inner Rage and Snark! They were fun, but exactly like you deduced in your original post, it was a ton of extra work and at certain points just diluted the experience and strengths/weaknesses. I'm doing my best to make sure that all stats have their own High/Low hidden options, to maximise that replayability.
Glad you pointed out the +1 Al thing - that's something that is never told to you in-game. Basically, the characters have relationships to you and based on how you act, they'll like you more or less. That, in turn, is supposed to lead to additional dialogues or quests, but in Open Mic there is only one check for relationships. (At the very end - you don't know it's there unless you play it twice and get different outcomes)
Anyway - huge thanks for the kind words and for sharing your thoughts on the game! I really appreciate it, and it helps me figure out what works and what doesn't - or works less well.