Quality versus Quantity

As mentioned in the previous post, I have some polls lined up, this being the first one.
I also want to talk about the roadmap and how I plan to structure the game.

Quality or Quantity?

How much effort do you expect from the narrative visually? I am specifically talking about what's going on behind the dialogue interface.

The last event was a real pain to implement.
Map design hurts, mostly due to tileset limitations and the busy work involved in converting sprites to objects that simulate depth. Or redrawing bought assets to fit proportions. This inadvertently adds constraints to the narrative.
i.e I wanted Nanami to have proper toy monsters, but I don't have the skillset to create those. Especially at scale.

Visual effects, constant NPC movement and pose changes, eye tracking. Tiny things that add up and become time consuming.
i.e I think I've spent 6 hours writing a script that defragged Rin at the end. It's neat, but there's no other use case for it at the moment. This is not good use of time if players don't care or even notice these things.

Generally, I don't mind dealing with it if people are fine with the pacing. I'll listen to suggestions if you have any. I wouldn't want to add visual novel segments, but I guess that's also an option to speed things up.

April - Gameplay update. 
Dream world hub. I want this to function like the home map, with several interactables that affect stats and appearance. Also, a hub for talking to Rin. I've said numerous times this will utilize colored, in an effort to encourage exploration, revisiting areas and trying out alternative puzzle solution.

I have not yet decided whether these would function as a consumables, or thresholds.

Scenario 1: You find 5 red orbs. Amending hair length or hair color consumes 5 red orbs. You have to find them again to change hair.

Scenario 2: You find 5 orbs. You can use those 5 orbs to either enforce different hair length or different hair color. You can swap them between one another, but those orbs don't respawn. You would need to find a different set of 5 orbs to enforce a change on both.

Both scenarios have a number of benefits and drawbacks. Curious to see what the opinion on this would be. Might be worthy of a poll as well.

Manor: hedge maze, journal entries

Lab: infirmary ward, return of Harlequin

There will also be some stat economy rebalancing.

May - Story update. 
Beach Episode, focused on Kari. Will serve as gateway into her route. I want this one to have a freeroam area with some light puzzles, rather than text box locked cutscenes.

June - Framework update.

The repopulation initiative program needs some rewrites before it's added back in.

The idea is to let MC get pregnant in the waking world, which requires some logical restructuring and narrative leaps for it to make sense. And reactions from NPCs. Stuff like that.

After that I guess I can delve into character specific events. More on that later.

This is the current plant at least. Keeping up with monthly updates has been... challenging. And yet, one narrative event per month is rather poor pacing. Especially considering how much more needs to be added.