I am so happy I stumbled over your project on a friends tumblr site, so I just wanted to leave you some thoughts and happyness and some of my money, when I figure out how Paypal works here ;) until I throw myself back to your gem of a game. <3
I only played the routes from Rumpel, Karma and Fritz so far & just found your gameplay note on Steam which hinted that I should have started with Rod and I hope it's not too late to enjoy his route until I get to the last one. I thought it might be ok to follow the route in which the boys are shown ingame. That was a little perplexing.
First of all: I loved Rumpels route!
It was the first I played and from his looks I did expect him to be ... well not such a big flirt, I guess, but I'm so glad I gave him a chance - he made me laugh so much! And it was a nice surprise when I came to that scene where he carries us back to our room. Until then I wasn't sure what to think about him, in terms of a relationship. But then it all came down nicely. Even when I had the bad ending - I tried again with the indicator and I really didn't do that much of 'wrong' choices the first time (surely not up to 10) so I was a little baffled with that. Some of the choices seem much alike, and 'feel' very alike. It's cool you have the indicator ingame, but it would be great if a player could figure out on her own if she liked the reaction she caused or not. Some were very subtle (the first choice, where he calls you 'feisty' but nothing besides that line is diffrent; or the moment when he calls you clever because you would stab someone in the right place - I didn't think that knowledge would make him love me more to be honest xD ) or not there at all (the whole scene with Bria, when you choose to interrupt them or not, it makes absolutely no diffrence). But this is only me, and I did have fun exploring the route. I was only sad when the ending was so... yeah sad. But in a good way, you really made me feel I didn't want to loose him.
So from what I saw of the game everything was really well written and I loved the concept behind his story. Especially how you showed the concept of love (which you picked up in Karmas Route, too) which is not as easy as it looks. And then the concept of selflove, to spoil yourself from time to time - that was a very nice moral you hid there. And meeting Bria, and to deal with her was really amazing. It added a really nice touch to the story and felt very realistic. I like it, when you can learn to understand a characters motives if you just try to do that. Your game is very rewarding, if it comes to that.
And I do love him, Rumpel, as a character. Most because of those moments like when he's eavesdropping - seconds after our heroine did the same thing. I could connect to him and his problems very well, I had a much harder time doing that with Fritz and Karma. Maybe because they do have a habit of making themselves scarce.
As a last thing to say for now, maybe I just pick Rumpel over the others, because he had the only 'solid' name. Actually I did choose him for the first route because of that. :D The only thing I think you could do better imho are the very big names of some of the noble characters - I wonder if you could remember them yourself without taking a note. ;) But you gave all of them nice nicknames, so it's ok I guess. ;)
Thank you for this gem of a game! You have a really great Team and I look forward to anything you'll want to share with us in the days to come.