oh my gosh thank you for the thorough review!! actually, i was only a preschooler in 2009 myself (and so were the other devs), so i completely understand what you mean about the dialogue in the chatroom not feeling authentic enough. i’ll try to do more research in the future to lessen that effect! :D and i get the feeling about the demo having too much bloat too… it was meant to make the player feel a little bored, but since i published it in a rush without a proper editing/trimming pass, i can see how it slowed everything down more than it needed to.
i hope that didn’t sour the experience for you, and that you’ll still come back to check out chapter one whenever it releases!! but even if you don’t, i am genuinely thankful for the thoughtful and helpful critique 💕