Thanks for playing, glad to see you liked it!
The "goddammit Battler" option was implemented two hours before release since my girlfriend suggested is as a theory that I hadn't considered. ^^"
The choice of visuals was ultimately arbitrary on my end. I wanted to visually communicate a different feel of the story from the get-go. My original plan was to have a UI similar to the MGS codec layout, with a rectangle containing the background being in the middle of the screen and character portraits being on the side, but I ultimately decided it against it since it didn't seem that aesthetically great. The final result kind of invokes those old adventure game/visual novel vibes which I think work well in the long run.
It was admittedly also an efficient way of cutting corners. The portrait and background art I had at my disposal wouldn't have managed to fill up the 1280x720 screen, and I wasn't in the mood to go digging and downloading massive files of several GB size. They perfectly fit the little window, though!