Well, I got the free itch version to test out the game and I honestly didn't have the best experiance with it. The game would constantly show me the choice regarding "Do you really want to walk naked in this location", sometimes just pressing "put clothes on" would work, and sometimes game would bug out completely and just constantly kept showing it until I chose the option to return home. I obviously did buy the perk "exhibitionist" at the start, I wanted to check if NPCs actually react to that as the game claims. I don't know if it might've been caused by the fact that during the tutorial I had a couple of errors show up two times and I had to ignore them.
But regardless, beside this issue which rendered the game pretty much unplayable, there were still other things. Mind you, I played for like 30 minutes or something, so I might've just missed something that isn't as obvious as it should be, even if it's there.
- The whole clothing section seemed funky and unituitive while also being super buggy, constatnly changing the clothes for a different set and undressing my character in the middle of nowhere.
- When talking to NPCs I really had hard time knowing when the conversation was succesful and when it wasn't, I get that it's written in dialogue, but even there it isn't really that clear, it really needs some indicator to show you if you succeded or not and what effects were aplied. Dialogue obviously repeats when you try to bring the relation level higher, or at least it's similiar, so I'm not going to read through every single word with caution, and a simple "Success" pop up would greatly increase satisfaction from all that clicking.
- When talking to random characters the menu for checking out their stats, likes, dislikes, etc. in my opinion should be possible to pin on the other side of the screen, at least if my assumption that this stuff matters is correct. It's annoying when I try to think what to do towards the character that they'll be most likely to appriciate and having to pull out the window, click through it, look at the parts I want to see, and the cloe it, before I can actually do any actions based of off that knowladge.
- Doing indecent things is also not as interesting as I thought it could be, walking out naked anywhere instantly causes you to be asked if you want to actually do that, and if you do you get instant dialogue that someone caught you. At least at for me, I wasn't able to find any way to do it sneakly or didn't see a chance to not get caught.
- As soon as I got the job at the shop, which was the first thing I did pretty much, everytime I walked into the shop I'm forced into some VN dialogue with the manager or something and, while I'd like to actually read it, it's annoying when I'm just trying to figure out how to make food.
- On that note the cooking system also seemed weird to me, I couldn't figure out what I actually had to do to get something to eat before sleep, there wasn't enough things in the fridge to make anything and all recipies available seemed really overcomplicated, possibly bugged, it required like 4 oil to make one omlet, not to mention other stuff.
- Back to talking with Random NPCs, maybe it's how the game was intened, but it seemed like the gains of relationship progress were really small, easy to loose, and insubstantial in consequences, while eating up a shit tone of ingame time. I tired to talk to one girl and after using the basic talk about any topic a couple times, plus trying out talk about cards, and about cooking (since her stats said she liked it) I still had all other options at like 30% success chance and passed couple hours of in game time. I mean, that's not even accurate if you're trying to go for super realistic, if I'd have spent 4 hours talking to a random stranger on the street I'd probably get to know them quite well, 100% got their contact information, and it'd probably mean that we really hit it off well and are a great match for at least being good friends.
- Also the way you mix free exploration and with VN elements is quite "in the way", at least for me. Basically I'm trying to explore some area, maybe talk to random NPC, and out of nowhere there is suddenly a VN "cutsceene" with someone who I didn't even know I should care about, just some random chick "stalks" me at work and right after that I'm suddenly on a date with her, not even knowing how it happened, I mean, not even one day passed in game for me. At the same time talking to random NPC to get them on the date would probably take up like 2 entire in game days.
- I also somehow got injured on the way, I don't even know when or how it happened, I didn't even know that it happened at all until I checked the apearance pannel to see what's wrong with my clothes, maybe a bug, maybe something I did wrong and didn't see in a dialogue, either way it should be more visible.
Don't take my criticism the wrong way, I do think that the game has potential and quite good concept, just the way it was executed leaves quite a bit of room for improvement. I usually don't really enjoy VN's that much but a balance between VN and this life/dating sim can be really decent, there is just to much clunkiness for my taste. I didn't even reach the first day of school and I already hit like 3 roadblocks (not including the bugs).
If I may give some suggestions at the end.
You could streamline the UI a bit more, some things need to be on top, like: the health display, character traits of the NPCs you speak with. Other's don't need to be so complicated: why do I need 5 (I can't be bothered to check exatly but it was around that) ingridients for an omlet? Just let me make it out of eggs and oil, that's enough. Maybe make the outfit tab into a simple grid design where player can see all available outfits at once and choose one, instead of that slider thingy.
And the last thing would be separating the VN parts from exploration a bit more, if there is am event for the situation, trigger it while I'm trying to walk out, or give me a big glowing exclamation mark to click if so I can first do my shopping or at least get know that I finished the work minigame before you froce me into a date with a character I see for the first time.
Well I've ritten a full on essey as always, I hope I didn't come of too harsh beacuse I really think that the game has a fun idea, the art is nice and the dialogue doesn't seem that bed either. Maybe something of what I've written will be usefull information to you that will help in developing the game. Wish you all the best.