aaah, gosh, thank you for all the kind words!! i'm really glad you like things so far ;w;
- it's just me atm while it's the early stages but i already have some friends i'll be relying on for general impressions/feedback as i work, and friends i'm planning on employing for QA and writing when needed. things are mostly going kinda slow because this is just a hobby project (for the moment!) and i have a part-time job to attend to
- while there isn't a ton of story planned for sure just yet, i've been working on the characters and lore for years now and most of them have their story arcs roughed out! it's a bit hard to say anything more concrete with how little context there's for the game atm though... if there's more specific things you're curious about i can try to answer that though!
- there's definitely going to be building friendships up, but i'm not sure whether i want non-platonic relationships or not yet. if i include them there will absolutely be at least some non-sexual or non-romantic options. either way, marriage and kids will almost certainly not be on the table. also, to add, there's some npcs that are already in relationships during the game
- there's going to be story in the game but most of it is going to be observing side-plotlines more than them leading the main plot, if that makes sense? and the core of gameplay is going to have a lot of little day-to-day things more similar to something like animal crossing or harvest moon or simulation-type games
good luck with your dreams of gamedev!! and i'm really touched to be an inspiration to that <3