This game's good! I like the art & artstyle, and I think Ellie's written fairly well for the limited selection of dialogue. The game does strike me as decidedly unfinished for a few reasons: it has no ending, it doesn't really have an intimacy climax with Ellie (either physical or emotional), and the very limited set of events definitely keeps things repetitive. Repetition isn't necessarily a problem for me, but the gameplay elements make it into one.
Both minigames are overlong. The driving one is fairly uncompelling. Knowing that it has an end almost makes it preferable to the shmup from a gameplay standpoint, but it's still a slog because it just takes forever without being that engaging. The shmup is impressive given that this is RPG Maker, but I think it's a poor fit for the game as designed. The tiny size of the player's shots is also a bit obnoxious sometimes, as combined with the very fast movement speed it's difficult to get hits on enemies. I think this shmup could be reworked to function much better, without requiring too much work to be done:
First, make it like two minutes long or something. It needs an ending. Payout should be rebalanced accordingly. Second, probably make the enemy pattern static (assuming it isn't already?) so that it's a game of mastery more than of reaction. Third, make the bullet hitbox bigger - same frequency & amount of shots, though, I'd imagine performance is a limiting factor in adding more. Fourth, make it so the player isn't damaged by enemies exiting the screen. The major thing to accomplish with these is making a game that is difficult to "100%," but not too hard to do decently at. I think it'd work much better as a short 'enemy rush' score attack that's difficult to fully stay on top of, where the expectation is for a new or less skilled player to simply not kill everything and just focus on surviving. I think this could work adequately by reusing all the elements you already have, you'd just need to arrange them differently. High skill play should be about understanding enemy locations and weaving quickly between killing them, while also dodging the shots returned to the player; as is, high skill play is just... seeing how long you can endure a repetitive gameplay loop that sometimes presents a challenge. I'm not shmup aficionado, but I love ZeroRanger and I think getting a high score in its first level is a great reference point: it's a couple minutes long but has a lot of potential for mastery which makes it rewarding. ZeroRanger is a high bar of course, and I don't expect this single minigame to be anywhere close to its quality or depth, but I think you could do a lot better than in this jam version without spending a ton of time! That said, like... don't do this if you're not actively interested >w> you don't owe anyone a rework. And even if you do rework this minigame, feel free to dismiss my idea, nothing's sacred about it!
Um. Yeah obviously that's where most of my thoughts lie, but again this was a good game overall! I liked it when I wasn't replaying the minigames ^w^; even the first time for both was okay, the shmup more than the driving one.