Hey thanks for the offer!
I have found ways to slightly improve the overall combined loading time and also ways to split up the loading, but unfortunately the main problem seems to be a bug in one of the plugins we are using (Dialogue Manager) in combination with instantiating scenes. After the jam though I’ll be able to upload an updated version which is significantly improved.
Nevertheless I would love to know if you have any ideas! Even with the optimizations I’ve managed it still takes a surprisingly long amount of time to force-preload some of the background scenes even when they are empty…