The idea of taking real life situations and making them a nightmare through the distorted and non literal view of a hikikomori eventually seemed like a genius idea to me.
I was shocked to notice that this is probably the first game ever that has succeeded in enflicting depression on me as part of a challenge
to overcome, an example would be the empty rainy streets outside with that horribly depressing music playing
actually made me want to go back to my house because it was a more comforting place. Obviously you could of made that more effective by making him less depressed about all the things in his room ( i would be happy to sit and play games)

Also I thought the ending getting really surreal was a sign of you just giving up, and it kind of broke the spell that this is a hikikomori’s reality,
not a crazy persons. More interesting & colourful gameplay Ideas rather that just falling back onto staple rpg grinding is definitely what is needed, and there are much more possibilities to turn the everyday obstacles that this man would have to face into horrible nightmares
such as going to get a haircut, getting a job, or possibly even reaching the final stage of getting a girlfriend (probably the highest level needed).

Like I said you are really on to something here, take it further!!!

The reality is:
1. The engine itself is far too limited to do anything creative with the gameplay except for the staple RPG tropes (unless I was willing to learn its language and further mod it, which was far beyond my abilities)
2. There wasn’t enough time to do everything we wanted to

The original game idea was to be far broader and more inspiring, doing exactly what you mentioned and more. The reality was there wasn’t enough time to make all the assets for that, design the dungeons/maps for it, AND playtest it. We were working on an animated film at the same time we were making this game, so not everything could go through.

It was intended to be social commentary in the beginning but ended up being more game parody towards the end. Still, it was a good learning experience.

I encourage everyone else to try their hand at making independent games as well; take the ideas and thoughts you had about our game and then flesh it out into a game of your own. Let’s have a dialogue together through the games we have made and will make in the future.

I got an idea for a game, wanna hear it?

This guy takes on an empire with a sword 5 times his size and together with a cast of misfits ends up defeated a god totally unrelated to the game’s story. It’s set in some kind of old age/futuristic setting. Also features a female midget with overly cute voice that’s bound ti inspire countless doujins. I bet that’s never been done before!

Am I an entrepreneur or am I an entrepreneur. Say that 10 times really fast.

:D