The start of the game nearly lost me with the dissonance between the presented 'darkness' of the protagonist and the actual childishness of his behavior. it comes off as more of a cartoon network wannabe drama than serious darkness when we go from speeches about 'wearing a mask' and 'the real you' into the protagonist dreading being called on to introduce himself in class, or otherwise girls ignoring him despite taking his desk. there is a time and place for such childishness, such as a cartoon network show, but I do not feel its place is in a porn game often wishing to present itself as grim, dark, or even grimdark.
although this is merely my opinion, and I do not mean to present this as a universal fact regarding human behavior, I think that the game does not fully carry the gravitas of 'real' trauma, despite trauma being the centerpiece of the story. The thing about lessons in love is that sensei actually went through horrible shit and those with an even semi-observant eye can see the remnants of that in every action he takes. the defeatism, the apathy, etc, are all hallmarks of someone broken by trauma. this is not to say that every character has to respond to trauma the same way (much less those with amnesia), but it would have smacked far more of realism if Miles went to school completely apathetic or unbothered towards traditional school hijinks - a bit like we see in that one Harriet scene where she mocks him and he's unbothered. That kind of numb reaction is much more what I would have expected throughout the game, rather than him spazzing out about teachers potentially calling on him or having awkward pickup lines or Autumn slightly bothering him.
In short, I wish to convey that his angst is that of a teenager with a cushy life and feels completely at odds with both the themes of the game and how the 'darker' scenes are presented. In every horror scene yet (the flashbacks, each glowy eye moment, etc) I have mainly found myself laughing at the dissonance, like one might laugh at a 6 year old who spills milk and then proclaims his life is over or something. This is especially bad given the INCREDIBLY edgy backlog font which is often at extreme contrast with the cartoon network dialogue.
As an aside, I really do not mean to say that all trauma results in defeatist numbness. However, what I do mean to say is that as an outside observer, it is tough to relate to or feel the weight of a supposedly life-altering, world-shattering trauma which results in a teen boy acting like every other teen boy and concerned about the same things every other teen boy is. Something strikes me as poorly conceived when you could reasonably put Miles as the lead character in a cartoon network show and he would not particularly stand out. Were he put as a lead next to Mandy in Billy and Mandy, for example, I would have thought nothing of it as a 12 year old.
In any case, the final comment on this matter I want to give is that as time goes on, I feel that Miles becomes less and less 'Miles' as it were. While early on I felt a conscious effort for Miles to be an actively angsty and delinquent, once one enters the sandbox he transitions to a more 'normal dude saying normal dude things' kind of personality. This will be me stepping somewhat out of place, but it came across to me as an extremely common case of an author being drawn towards writing the protagonist wholly as themselves. It is most easy when writing to simply put to pen the stream of consciousness from one's own mind, and basically once we leave the prologue and start doing personal events with girls it felt like Miles fully became just a 'normal dude' instead of the character that had been built up. Not really ~that~ important, because it is more enjoyable to read scenes with a bland protagonist than an actively cringeworthy one, but I thought it may be pertinent to note this to put the idea out there since this is the kind of thing that can sometimes happen unconsciously. All my opinion, of course, and easily explained away with Kitsune shenanigans anyway.
As my final note, I would like to say I find the model quality and presentation of the game generally above-average, such that despite my issues above I wouldn't really mind continuing to play simply for the widespread appeal of harem battle action meme games or what have you. The core of the game is good and it's no wonder why it has reached early popularity despite what I may identify as early issues. However, I feel great concern for the game's future in that once again a LiL clone has taken it upon themselves to include like 20 heroines in their game without seeming proper awareness for the ungodly workload that entails. Selebus can have so many characters in his game because he's an insane workaholic with the writing output speed of a God on top of being dedicated to working nearly daily for 10 years straight. For almost anyone else, including so many heroines is simply a bad idea. I have already felt sour when after finishing the prologue most main characters I was interested in (Autumn, Lily, etc) had exactly like two short scenes of content after like a year (?) of development. This is not my place to say, and in fact will have no meaning whatsoever, but I strongly advise considering cutting down the main cast to like 5 or 6 characters. I know that Koikatsu gives one the godlike power of making as many hot characters as you want, and therefore one's dream game naturally is filled with every single hottie one can imagine, but if After Dark has gone from having 2 scenes per character to 4 or 5 scenes per character at 3-4 years of work then that will be the greatest death sentence there can be. Even for a work that actively intends to be harem, I think one will find a playerbase far more satisfied getting a decent amount of content for a core 5-6 characters over being strung along for a decade with barely any content for most of the cast. Even Karin in LiL went like 2 years without content at some point at Selebus's pace..
Anyway, this concludes my unsolicited advice and thoughts. Although I feel that the core themes and drama of After Dark are too childish for the presented dark atmosphere of the game, I would say this is one of the better LiL clones out there if only for the high model quality and respectably straightforward story. You should definitely be proud with what you have and I only hope that I don't need to put it no the backburner for 5 years then come back to play the 10 hours of content that has been added in that time.
p.s. final note: I know the blackboard text is chosen by patreon subscribers, but you should reaaaaaaaally have enough of a backbone to say 'no' to whoever suggested it have "Play Lessons in Love, it's better than this shit." That is NOT the quote you want your playerbase seeing and I felt secondhand awkwardness witnessing it