I found this game through your devlog on YouTube, which was hilarious to watch. Having played one route of this game, I liked the backgrounds, the simplicity of going after a certain crush, and the slice-of-life feel of the story. There was humor, and the pun at the end there was masterclass! I also loved the hot pink animated title screen.
The anime character sprites were at odds with the backgrounds, but that was no biggie for me. Although, the one character sprite was so big, he seemed bigger than the other character sprites and appeared a bit blurry. It was the guy with the blonde hair and blue outfit.
Otherwise, the story did grow on me with time, and I was surprised to see how you weaved in certain subplots with the overall main plot.
I will say, I didn't know who Tyler was. I met Joel, Colin, Thomas, and Andrew. So, when the game asks me who I want to work with, I'm like, "Who's Tyler? Did I miss something?"
I'm assuming he could be found when choosing different choices, unless you accidentally put in the name Tyler instead of Thomas there. Regardless, I went with Joel. So, I took no mind to that.
There were times I pressed the spacebar too quickly, I suppose, and missed text. I also found the save button later on in the game above the textbox. I don't know why. Originally, there was the load, options, and main menu buttons above the textbox in the beginning of the game, but there was no save button until later on in the experience, which confused me, as I could have at least saved earlier to load earlier text that I missed.
Luckily, the story was simple enough that not seeing some dialogue didn't ruin the experience for me. Although, I thought I had to manually hover and click on the choice menu buttons, but it turns out that pressing the spacebar can trigger a choice to be chosen. Luckily, it chose the option I wanted to go with, and I only struggled with that once in my single playthrough thus far.
Frankly, I don't know if I would go through a second playthrough with how long-winded, boring, and generic the story is from its dialogue to the length of its scenes. I saw moments of conflict, but I feel that they were low-stakes or didn't necessarily connect with the main character that those moments felt underwhelming overall.
I create visual novels, too, with my own crappy and low-effort art, which you can check out on my channel as well if you're interested. When I craft a story, I think about how to produce questions or conflicts in each scene, giving the protagonist a personal goal to reach for or a problem to solve that is meaningful to them.
I think I was missing who the protagonist was in this VN, but I also understand that the player was a blank-slate protagonist and that this was a parody of a dating sim. Although the plot was finishing the presentation, I didn't wholly connect with that plotline because it didn't seem truly meaningful to the MC. However, the romance grew onto me, as that was the heart of the story. So, good job there! I love a good romance.
By the way, I loved the heart animations when moving between scenes. Lovely touch there, as it really gives the game a sense of personality and to reinforce that this is a romantic dating sim.
I think the plotline with the presentation could have been stronger if we the players saw how the MC worked through that either with examples, internal conflict, or even how MC and partner worked on it together to really reinforce the importance of that plotline while also weaving in moments of romance and friendship in there.
However, hindsight is 20/20, and maybe I'm taking things more seriously than I should. Regardless, I give it a solid 6.5/10. Nice job!