Thank you for your feedback! We are happy to know that you enjoyed our game so much that you wrote such a long review.
Yes, the Journey mode is a big experiment and we are currently working on improving it based on the feedback we've received.
The other unpleasant things like the strange UI behavior are mostly due to engine bugs that we are trying to fix.
Also, recently players found out why Grace's quest was breaking (if you talk to her instead of searching for her room). This will be fixed in the next version.
The character's personality fell victim to our initial concept - we planned a clearly defined plot, but over time, based on player feedback, we decided to make the character "formable."
Now, gradually, we are removing traces of his character from the plot, leaving room for it to be shaped through dialogue responses.
Basically, we suffer from banal things - lack of time and money. That is, now there are only two of us on the team and we spend our personal free time from work and our own money on the project, paying for the work of freelancers in those things that we cannot do ourselves. For example, we have to order VFX, sounds and animations - and this means that we must be sure of the content before we spend money on it, and not just our time.
For example, that's why, in the current version of Journey, the characters are static, and the interface is assembled on stubs and does not correspond to the general style.
Following our original intention, we still try to take player feedback into account as much as possible.
And every piece of feedback we receive gives us the strength to keep working.