My eyes lit up when I saw this release. Your games touched me deeply when I first played them and I still cry multiple times whenever I play Home. I loved The Alchemist, too—the 'reveal' got me sobbing too. The character art on this remake is fantastic: these look and feel just like the characters I remember—which isn't an experience I've had before.
Some thoughts, which I'll try to keep constructive where negatively critical, with an appreciation that not all of them might be actionability-wise worthwhile, and trying to avoid spoilers (I'm not sure what the Itch etiquette is):
- I found the left-aligned (as compared to centred) introduction text quite distracting, and 'wrong'-feeling, especially with the slight indent(?) of the first line.
- The cApiTaLiSaTiOn on 'Drunken Sailor' amused me. :P
- The fades are a bit intense in number, especially at the start; yet, some times it's jarring without them (like when Lia and Izara are first introduced). They could certainly stand to be quicker in some cases, if possible.
- I'm not sure that the faded, zoomed-in character portraits over the text box do much when the characters are 'in shot': I found them a little distracting too. The coloured names combined with the character facial animations (when present, which they mostly are) seem to do quite a good job.
- A couple of the pieces (2x2, O-shape) 'fought' me a fair bit in the block placement mechanism. I think that they'd benefit from their 'centres' shifting a little, if possible.
- Spontaneous, asynchronous blinking!! :D
- I loved the updated evening/conversation music, with the ambient synths(?) and dreamy piano. The guitar also feels more like the original than the original! Amazing!
- On day 3, I think that Rook would be more naturally placed on the left with Ashe during the evening conversation with Lia: he's mostly talking to the latter.
- Clarent is a good man! xD
- I get the sense that Ashe should be smiling for the line "In fact, I think a celebration is in order." on day 7.
- The final shot is beautiful, but I find it really steals the punch from the scene to not have the portrait transition to tears in tandem with the text. One more frame to provide that transition, and the first possibly placed slightly later in the text, could make a big difference to how that scene 'hits'. The outro sequence also felt quite abrupt: might that transition (to the plain text) better be a fade-out?
Feel free to ignore all that. More than anything, I'm happy to see that you're still around and working on projects like this. Thank you for existing! =)