Feed back:
- The choice of clothing not being reflected by the cgs except the home one feels weird. Also Lena suddenly wearing cloths I never bought her is... not genial. In particular when it come to the exposed traits. Like, you could fuck her without taking off her top which could stop her from getting the inconfortable trait if exposing her breast is still a problem, but the scene make her automatically naked.
- An idea to expend the dressing idea could be to do something like koikatsu did and have a mechanic to chose different set of cloth Lena is made to wear depending on the setting. Like maybe you want Lena naked in private, but dressed outside and wear the professional set when working. This would synergise well with the training and traits ideas, after all Lena may not mind as much if only the protagonist sees her exposed vs being exposed in public.
- It would be great to have more passive effects like chosing her sleeping accomodation (from the closet to the protagonist bedroom to private appartement) or making work passive and having multiple type of work to chose from.
- I recommand that you check
Rewind as it's also a grindy game with a traits system.
- It's hard to say what should be trained, up to how many time and how far it should be push, for exemple after getting the well trainned trait at 12 itteration of trainning (I belive). I pushed it to 200 expecting to get an upgrated trait, because it's description said that Lean is lightly trainned, but I got no feed back of the game (Maybe there is and I didn't saw it, but still). Maybe there isn't an upgraded trait or I need to do something else like progess the chapter or get an other trait, but there should be hint or failsafe to stop the player from following red hairing. Something simple as adding "additionnal trainning won't help for now" would work to communicate that there is nothing invisible at play.
- There is no way to tell that an option became accepted by Lena other then randomly trying them. Like for me the handjob became white relatively early, but still make Lena unconfortable when I tried it. And I only know that she became confortable with panty rub because I periodically tried the white options randomly to see how she react.
- In adittion to graying out options, they could be color coded depending on Lena willingness to act on them. Like : gray out (Lena refuse to do it and you can't force her or you can't do it), dark red (Lena refuse to do it, but you can force her), red (Lena will do it, but don't like it), white (Lena don't mind or neutral), green (Lena accept it), dark green (Lena like it or is use to it)
- The tutorial say that you don't want to hand hold, but remember that : a good hard game is hard, but faire; a good unfaire game is brutal, yet concistant; and a aimless game is never trully aimless.
- Also, having a way for the player to fetch help (like questionning Lena or not so sneakily having her give hard hint if asked on what to do to progress the game) would go far toward preventing the player from feeling or being stuck.For exemple, I am stuck on her wanting no more then me touching her feet, panty rub and saying something lewd on the good path, and I got no idea of what I am suppose to do on the dark path since she will inevitably become inconfortable from me being a rapey goblin meaning that the starting hint is useless except if I am suppose to somehow rape her without making her inconfortable?
- Remember that scope creep is a real danger that developers without hard time limit easily fall pray to. Try to keep a release schedual, but don't annouce it until you prove to yourself that you are able to respect it if you ever intend to annouce it. You will most likely overshoot it as you get the proper experience to estimate how much time it take you to do things, but don't worry about it. It just mean that you need to put a hard stop to any scope creep. And finalise what you already plan or even cut on unecessary things to the planned state of the next release (you can always bring back the cut content later). This will allow you to see progess in your project and stop your efforts from spreading to much and losing there worth or momentum.
- Finally, I saw games die because they lost there original scope. From the developper just wanting to do something else. to advice/request that doesn't match the right persective for the game. Like ntr as a failure state in an harem game, an interesting idea that will just kill the game attractiveness to it's real and already present audiance. Or an edgy god game turn into light hearted school life simulator which just confuse the heck of the audiance that got filtered both by the edgy start and light hearted middle.