Ah, thank you for taking the time to play and leave such a detailed review~! It occurs to me that I probably should have made a designated "review" thread for this purpose before now... ^^' but anywho...
I'm really glad you enjoyed the writing, the choices, and the art! As far as the stats - or "attributes" - go, they'll come into play more and more as the game goes on. They factor into different situations that may crop up occasionally, depending on your choices:
- High strength may save you in potentially life-or-death situations
- High charisma may allow you to negotiate your way out of political strife
- High intelligence may help you solve certain mysteries more quickly
- To be clear, the game doesn't really PUNISH you in these situations if you don't met the stat requirement, but you'll have to be a lot more careful to plan ahead and cover your bases...
- Toward the end of the game, the stats also play into your romances (there's a minimum stat check of 60 Charisma for Emry, 60 Strength for Teiran, and 60 Intelligence for Noah) to ensure that you and your love interest are at least somewhat compatible
- They are checked a final time at the end of the game to see how you go about resolving the final conflict. You will succeed or fail depending on your choices, your strengths, and your weaknesses.
Hope that answers your questions regarding the attributes system! Finally, to address your concern with the bug - this was actually just an example of me cutting corners. ^^' I thought I was pretty careful in that one to avoid calling the children 'orphans' in the actual dialogue that follows after that choice (that way it could apply to either option), but if it slipped in there by mistake, I'll definitely fix it in the full version of the game!
Thank you once again and I hope you enjoy the final product when it's done!