Hello! I want to say that I really love this game, I've been following kind of silently for awhile, and I noticed in the discord you were posting progress images of the characters, I didn't want to say anything at first but i don't know, it's kind of an unpopular opinion but here we go.
I think the new sprites don't look good, the MC"s shoulder looks a little large in comparison to everything else, and everything is just so dark, I understand it's a dark themed VN, but when the background is dark, the story is dark, and the characters are dark too? There's no real contrast, unlike the original that had darker backgrounds and brighter looking characters, they were a little easier to see, but now it's just a lot of black shading on black. I don't want to sound too harsh, I just want to offer another perspective, Tom's sprite especially. I think his jaw is set a little too low, it looks more like he has wider cheeks instead of a wider jaw, it's a tad unflattering, which is a little unfortunate as Tom is probably my favorite character. Charlie is also very dark, it's just a lot of black shading, and I don't want to discourage you or make you think i'm trying to just be negative, I think the story is fantastic and the scenery is beautiful, I just think having especially dark characters with dark backgrounds is a mistake visually, and some of the anatomy is a bit off. Obviously not all art will be perfect, and always striving to improve is a good trait, so I hope this doesn't come off as toxic, criticizing always gives me a bit of anxiety because I'm worried it will be taken as just insults and not constructive like I want it to be, I just want to help a little if I can, and i know people will probably disagree with me, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that, I think the older sprites were more visually appealing, even if they weren't anatomically correct, but it's also a personal opinion. I'm really looking forward to the development of this VN, and I hope to support it however I can. I'm really sorry if I caused any offense ;~: