Bit of a long one here so bare with me.
While the font for the title is default, the background image reflects the game play (with a clear shot of various characters) plus the music is very old timey snes music box like which fits with the particular tiles you’re using (and the change in music per area fits well with what's supposed to be there, I.E. more bpm for Genko's area for example). The window screen has a bit of a thickened line on the corners but otherwise, it looks quite nice.
Text wise, there are some little hiccups (names not capatilized and extra/missing spaces) but otherwise you can easily see the personality of the characters in how they are written. The sprite used for Misha in dialogue options has a tiny extra bit of pixels on the left which seems to make it off center compared to the others.
Gameplay:
There really isn’t anything to tell me what buttons do what, which is okay as this is standard RPG Maker MV but that can get a little hairy if I wasn’t familiar with it. There is a bit of reliance on "common sense" to perform various actions (like fishing for example, you aren't told you need to go to the end of the dock) which again, is more of a nitpicky kind of thing here. The quest journal is a nice touch but completion of the toy quest didn’t result in any kind of notice (nothing to say the quest was done or what the next step was after finding the toy) but it did update the journal on the first day to let me know of the various quests I had to do (the Apprenticeships, Speaking with everyone and Manuscript).
There is a passability issue in the MC’s home where I can walk up onto the upper portion of the wall (2nd floor has it on the parent’s bedroom wall and 1st floor starts just one “block” below the door). Map transfers also have a nasty habit of sending me back to using the previous map if I’m using my mouse to move.
Then came the game breaking bug on Day 4. If you enter the mine with Jet standing in front, you cannot move without returning to the cave. Every time you exit the cave/mine, you're ported to in front of Jet with the only available movement is to the left which puts you back into the cave. If you have already done your apprenticeship with Tolkien then you’re stuck and cannot progress the storyline any.
Graphics Wise:
2 NPCs walk into a wall and just stop on Day 2 (Shiori and Suki), they are still capable of being interacted with but look a little strange. Day 2 also had the gold griffin (Shiori’s grandmother I believe?) with some image clipping on the wings. Day 3 had Menke with clipping on the top of their head. Otherwise, everything has a cohesive look and it genuinely looks like the homes belong to the same village.
After getting the bad end on my second play through, I was still able to walk around during the To Be Continued screen which might have been intentional but seemed a little weird. I could also move the camera during the initial starting screen after the second dialogue box.
Closing Thoughts:
Despite the few bugs, it’s a fun little game. The characters feel different enough to make it feel like it’s an actual diverse village. While you kind of just get dropped into the relationship with Shiori (or friendship I suppose), it does make sense with the history of the characters, I just would have liked some more references to the childhood they had to make it feel more like a believable background.
I liked the little touches with the 4th wall breaking comments and the Griffin’s prayers made me giggle. Storyline wise, I couldn’t figure out how to work on the Manuscript (as per the quest, but only tried up until Day 4 as I had to restart on that day) but otherwise I enjoyed the varying dialogue from each character.
There's a lot of stuff going on in the game and it looks like you're planning on adding more so that's awesome. I'm not a huge fan of the particular tile/character style but I enjoyed it. Just gotta ask... where did Tobi go use the bathroom? (just kidding, that was a good end to an entertaining scene).
TL:DR; version
I like the game. It's very cute with a diverse cast. A few bugs here and there but otherwise a nice little game. It also has some replay value given the different endings as well as an ability to customize the character's path.
And congrats on getting a game in! Especially as this is solo work, which makes it all the more impressive.
4/5