Well, I tried your proof of concept for this game. I got the bad end, and then got the lovers ending. Aleena was controlled by the AI until she fell in battle against the final boss, and reviving her allowed me to finally control her actions. I think I spent more time than I should've trying to grind the quests and level-up when I should've been making a beeline towards the ending tile. Out of the 3 abilities, I feel Counter is kinda useless if the enemy attacks Aleena. It just seems like Magic is the way to go unless it's 1 or 2 specific foes (a single Attack cannot stop both Aleena and the Hero).
When you said it would've cost 10k $, I was expecting a lot more graphics than I witnessed during my game session. So, I snooped and noticed there's like 2~3 additional party members. This is like the third or fourth time I noticed a plethora of unused assets within your games. Shame I didn't get to interact with Berthalda within the game proper; she's cute.
I feel like I'm one of the few people who leaves feedback on your games over the last decade, so I'll just say I'm not an anti-AI person. I think the technology is interesting, though its quirks and limitations make me hesitant to dive into it myself. An artist whose '超乳な獣耳っ娘' character illustrations I've loved for over 2.5 decades, Tyoki (ちょき), started dabbling in Grok's AI, and his animation outputs are amazing considering the platform keeps censoring anything too ecchi (even if it's supposed to be cheesecake, it'll trigger their censorship bot; therefore non-generations stealing his hefty monthly subscription membership).
In any case, I hope you get over whatever creative humps have been causing you depression so you can finish a game where I can interact with the cutest (and bustiest) kemonomimi maidens like Berthalda in the future. Use whatever technology allows you to create and makes you happy. I like your pixel art, commissioned illustrations, and I didn't mind the assets I saw in the picture folder.
