Thank you for the lovely comments. This was my first foray into emotive story-driven gaming and I'm really glad the team had some prior experience to bring to the table. Totally get the point about the mechanics, I am to blame for that ropiness, kept chasing the concept of the game every day as I got more feedback and realised the original story (which ended into a total bleak despair no matter what) was a rather unhelpful way to look at loss. So we switched up to a more hopeful approach and the mechanics suffered from a lack of polish.
really appreciate you playing and taking time to give feedback