Hello! Tonic here. This game was super cool!! Thanks so much for sharing.
First off, I really loved the artwork!! The characters were all very cool/beautiful, which is a style I'm a big fan of...💚 My favorite is Aedhan's designnn 😻 But Laurent is also 👌✨
The opening scene explaining the spiritual cleansing mechanic after resurfacing too quickly with Wesyng was really cute and interesting, hehe 🤭🌸
Battle: I really liked the overall concept of flipping cards and only having some of them be relevant to the move you've already picked (attack or support). But I definitely agree that I'd prefer if flipped-over cards could remain visible...!;; (I forgot a lot) Still, that card system is a fun idea!
If I were to give any feedback on the small portion I experienced so far, I feel like there are some transitions that are a bit abrupt, like when completing the tutorial at the beginning. It feels a bit anti-climactic/kind of breaks immersion when the move from screen to screen is so sudden (but I know it's difficult to implement/change those things too majorly, esp in renpy!).
For the writing, I felt a bit like the character voices all felt somewhat similar. I like how different everyone's visual designs are, so it's really exciting to me when folks' patterns of speech are really distinct too! But I noticed I kept having to look up to the name plate to figure out who was talking. I also felt like the voice clips could've been a bit more distinct/emotional as well. (All of this is kind of subjective/could very well be a me-problem!)
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get too far in exploring the depths of either combat or story, due to brain/time shortages... But I really liked your overall game design here, both in battle and with the characters!! The UI was also really nice and cohesive, with all the teal tech aesthetics. I'm sorry I couldn't get into it more just yet...!
Lastly, the animations were very nice!! I'm a big fan of animated visual novel sprites and use them myself, and I really like the way you've done them here! Like fading into different layers, as opposed to just morphing the various parts. (I also know how much work it is to be The Artist AND The Writer AND The Animator lol!!! So triple great job on all this hard work!) 🌠
I hope to be able to play more sometime soon!