> Still, the utter lack of feedback on it (apart from some private ones in Discord chats, from fellow developers) cannot help but raise a brow.
I'm sorry to hear that. If it helps, you're not alone in this. For some reason a lot of people are passive consumers, even in the field of original fiction and fanfiction. I write both and I can safely say that it's more expected that creators of free content do tend to get crickets in terms of feedback.
It's like you can tell from the numbers in the stats that folk are consuming them - they're just not saying anything.
Comment culture for free creations tend to be like that. I don't think a lot of consumers of free creations have thought about providing feedback of any sort, even a "thank you". It may not be their fault though - they may not have been taught about the processes or things developers of free games go through. Most of us don't really share the difficulties we've encountered to put them out.
In contrast, I've kinda noticed VNs and premium locked novels getting more traction in general. It's pretty interesting! It'd be interesting for a study to be made in regards of it.
Cheers!