Yeah, I can respect that for sure. The most common complaint about Stranded in Space comes from its kinetic/not-open-world structure.
That's intended as you pointed out. I will say that similar to the three major decisions in the base 8 days (neighbor choice, girl waking up, locational memory recall) there are 3 more coming in the next update, Days 12-13. There will be a ton of routes/different scenes when the game is fully finished, which is kinda cool, right?
But it will still be a kinetic game. I did add the ability to skip sex scenes (in the Preferences section) if you really hate a character, but that's definitely as far as it'll go. I'm glad you still enjoy the game, and if there's ever another game that I make, it will be a counter to Stranded in Space's structure. Meaning it will be open-world/choose-your-interests based.