TL;DR:
Do you like the long scenes as they are?
Pros:
- Scenes have more depth.
- Characters' personalities are well defined.
- If you are really into a scene, there'll be a lot more of it.
- Long scenes could be a defining characteristic of the game.
Cons:
- Too much, and it turns into a CYOA instead of a game.
- Higher odds of getting bored.
- Less interactivity.
- Less replay value.
Do you want shorter scenes with more choice?
Pros:
- More content per release.
- More interactivity.
- More choices that make a difference.
- More replay value.
Cons:
- Short scenes cannot be as in-depth as long scenes. Story, character development, etc. may suffer, or be inconsistent from player to player.
- There will probably be more bugs. More choices means more possibilities, and the more possibilities, the more chances there are for me to not anticipate one.
Hello! I'm still on a long journey to make the game more game-like. As far back as my first game, I've had a weird relationship with scene length. Compared to most textbased games, my scenes are relatively long with relatively few choices. I think this makes them unique, but unique doesn't equal good (doesn't equal bad either).
Let's take the latest scene for example: when it comes to the lewd part, I spent considerable time on it, and it only has one path: butt stuff. If you're not into that, the lewd part poses no interest to you. What if instead of going about it the way I did, I spent half as much time on the butt stuff and used the remaining time on lewd non-butt stuff. One release would appeal to a wider range of people's interests.
This doesn't just mean more content, it means more choice. "Do you want to see this path or that path?" Reducing scene length to the extreme, the text/choices could look like this:
This is a GIF from a textbased game named Sorcery 4 that I really enjoyed. Notice how short each response is. Notice how many choices you get after each response. This is feasible because each response is 1-2 paragraphs and each paragraph is 1-3 sentences. It's also worth noting there is less character development. You don't get a sense of the personality of the trader or of the main character.
Compare that to Monster Girl Farmer. excluding encounter reactions, I bet the average response to a choice is over a thousand words. When it gets that long, the sunk cost fallacy comes into play: "I spent so much time writing this, do I really want to give players a choice to skip it?"
It's possible to have some long scenes and some short scenes in a single game, but you'll only be allowed to make one choice. That's because it's useful to me to know which of these two is more important to you. Regardless, I don't plan on a major pivot, just thinking about what to do in the future to make the game more enjoyable to people.