You... definitely may ask if you're giving me one of the greatest questions I've had the opportunity to answer. You've touched on a subject that a lot of people seem to get confused about. First things first, unfortunately, I can never say for sure how far the next update is, as each chapter has its own set of needs and challenges. The plan here is to work as fast as I possibly can to get the next one out. About the golden question, yes! Well, sort of...
Many people dislike that I'm introducing a "sandbox" mode down the line, and mostly, I sympathize with their reasons. Let's just say that some games using that sort of design choice tend to be a little dull and repetitive, regardless of how much they excel at everything else. For my game, however, this sort of gameplay design is a must. There's simply too much to explore that I can never do in a linear visual-novel format. So yeah, when I introduce the open-world mode down the line, some activities and management elements are the kind of thing you can expect. I'm a huge fan of games with management elements myself (Kenshi is my all-time favorite game, and I'm having a lot of fun with RimWorld, too).