Hey there, boys, girls, and non-binaries! It's been a while since I posted the survey to the public, but I'm here now to report on the results! Let's see what feedback I got from my fans! You can view the full results here.

Warning, there will be spoilers for Act 1 of Owen's route here. Also, it's highly recommended you read the survey results while reading this blog as I'll be going in chronological order with the exception of one question I'll mention later. Anyways, let's get on with the survey results.

Currently, there are 53 responses to the survey, with 27 of them putting in their online handles (although one of them might be putting in the platform they're using instead?). This is an increase from the 42 responses I got from the previous survey, which is always good to see.

As with before, most people found this game through itch.io, which makes sense. Interestingly enough, a few people found this game through Twitter, when no one mentioned Twitter in the previous survey. About my 25% of patrons took the survey, which is a smaller amount compared to the previous survey results. Looks like there were more responses from the public this time while the amount of patrons that responded stayed roughly the same, I wonder why that is.

When asked why they downloaded the game, a lot of people said it was because of the artstyle or because of the attractive men, while others mentioned that it was because the story seemed interesting. Two responses that stood out to me said they downloaded the game because they knew Nemo personally, which intrigued me. A considerable amount of people specifically mentioned Owen, which was telling.

For what respondents expected, a lot of people expected smut and a dating sim while others expected a very serious murder mystery story. Some people expected both and found out that the game was what they expected, because that's what the game is. Overall, it seemed like the respondents had their expectations either met or exceeded, which is always nice to hear.

The last three VNs respondents read were interesting. The most common responses I got were Extracurricular Activities with 13 mentions, Monster Village with 9 mentions, Shelter with 7 mentions, and Flaming Flagon with 5 mentions. I'm not sure what those games have in common, but we'll roll with it. For what were their favorite VN, the most mentioned VN was Adastra, where it got mentioned 4 times. Tennis Ace, Monster Village, and Killigan's Treasure were mentioned three times each, while Echo, Lustful Desires, Burrows, Roads Yet Travelled, Extracurricular Activities, Minotaur Hotel, and Remember The Flowers were mentioned two times each. By Your Hands also had four respondents at least consider it for being their favorite, so that's probably good. It's funny, I had at least two people say sorry to me, and like, that's pretty sweet honestly. There were a bunch of different VNs mentioned and I couldn't really find a pattern aside from beefy men and romance, I just think at least people who read By Your Hands have a wide arrange of genres they enjoy.

We're going to skip what creators respondents said they followed as that's too much work to iron out and go straight into how much people liked it. Overall, the reception is pretty good. Only 1 respondent put in a rating that's under 4. 56.6% of respondents gave it a 5 while 41.5% gave it a 4. The portion of people who gave it a 5 is a bit smaller than the previous survey, but the actual amount increased. As for why this is, I guess more people who thought it deserved a 4 took the survey. Then we look at the most popular main character, and surprisingly Owen came up on top this time! In the previous surveys, Brendan was always the most popular main character, but it looks like people took a liking to this shy orca. Brendan isn't too behind though, being at second place. The rest of rankings goes as the following: Rex>Kamil>Vlad>Connor. For why people picked these characters as their favorites, a lot of them were the same: they were attractive, they were sweet, they were relatable, and their stories were compelling. A lot of people said they specifically liked Owen because of his shy personality while others said that Rex was a strong protagonist. I'll have to see how people's opinions on these characters change after Vlad's and Connor's routes come out, I'm sure it will be interesting.

For the side characters, the three most popular characters were Yousef, Olivia, and Wyatt. I already talked about these characters before in my devlogs, but it's good to see Yousef and Olivia getting some love. Other than the characters being attractive, Yousef is liked for being good support for Rex in Kamil's route and Olivia being a good older sister to Owen.

The first route most respondents did first was Brendan's. Seems like most people who did this survey went followed the games development for a while now as Brendan's route was the first to be worked on. Second to Brendan is Owen, which shouldn't be too surprising all things considered. Most respondents did Owen's, Kamil's, and Brendan's routes, less so for the latter two, whereas less people did Connor's and Vlad's routes. Makes sense considering Connor's route hasn't been worked on and Vlad's currently being developed. Out of the three options I gave for the question, almost half of respondents said that Owen was their favorite route, followed by Brendan, and then Kamil's. People said they enjoyed Owen's route for Owen and how they related to his situation. They enjoyed Kamil's route for the side characters, the amount of NSFW content in it, and the intriguing character arc Kamil goes through. And they enjoyed Brendan's route because of how much Brendan appeals to them.

When asked about their favorite scene, I got a wide variety of responses but a lot of them were of NSFW scenes, of course. Of the non-NSFW scenes, two that I noticed got mentioned a lot were the pier scene in Day 5 of Owen's route and the confrontation in the locker room in Day 6 of Kamil's route. I'm glad people enjoyed those two scenes as we worked really hard on making sure they hit the tone just right. The art is respectfully well liked, with over half saying it's a 5. I asked for feedback but most respondents didn't really have anything they'd like to improve and there wasn't any overlap between the respondents that did have some criticism, so there's not really any pattern other than to polish my fundamentals. As for how people think of the writing, the proportions of the results are actually the exact same as the proportions of the results for the overall rating. If that's not an indication on how much writing influences the quality of a visual novel, I don't know what. Like with the art, there wasn't much feedback on how to improve the writing other than to fix some grammatical errors. If people aren't giving me too much criticism, then that's probably a good sign.

And now we get to the section focusing on Owen. Most people's first impressions of him were that he was a cute, shy, chubby guy. Some people said he looked like he needed a hug while others said that they thought he was autistic. I particularly liked the response that said "I'm gonna marry you". For what people liked about Owen, it seems like the most common answer was his passionate side that contrasts with his more shy side, which I do agree is an endearing part of his character. Other common answers include his looks, his personality, and how he acts in bed. As for what people didn't like about him, a lot of people mentioned his anger issues. A couple also put in his parents, but those are separate characters so I'm not sure how they're Owen's flaws. Most people had their opinion of Owen improved after Day 6, with only a couple of people being unchanging after Day 6.

For the side characters of his route, people generally liked Olivia although the reception to her wasn't that strong. People were less warm towards Gavin, and were very lukewarm towards Charlie. We haven't seen much of them yet, so it will be interesting to see how people will react to them in the future. I'm not going to talk about the next two questions in the survey as they deal with speculation on the story and considering I'm the creator of this VN, it would be very easy to look into what I say as hints of the future story, so let's move on.

69% (Nice) of respondents said they cuddled with Owen on the bed while slightly less people had sex with him. The amount of people who topped Owen is only one more than the amount of people who bottomed for him, so it seems mostly balanced on what position people prefer.

As for Rex himself, most people like him, with no one giving anything lower than a 3 to him and almost half of respondents responding with a 5. We all love a good himbo dinosaur. 

For NSFW content, I got a wide variety of responses, most of them discussing different kinks they wanted to see in the game, although I didn't notice any pattern with the responses. For the question asking what could be improved in the game, most people said that there wasn't anything to be improved upon, which is a good thing. For the people who did mention stuff to be improved upon, I didn't really notice a pattern among these responses but I will keep these critiques in mind while developing the game.

When asked what they expect Vlad's route to be like, a lot of people expected that there will be a focus on drag and exploring queerness. A few mentioned that they expect the route to have a theme of being osctracized from society. We'll see what will happen in Vlad's route. 

The penultimate question was just added for laughs and giggles, and yeah the results are amusing.

For the final question, I asked everyone if they had anything else to say to me and/or Nemo. There were a lot of positive comments from people and they were very supportive and kind. Thank you everyone for all the loving words! And thank you everyone who have responded to this survey. I hope you have a good day and see you later!

Before I leave I just wanted to mention that I wrote a script for a video responding to Anthony Gram's "We Need "Bad" LGBTQIA Representation | A Movie Video Essay". It's a bit… loaded, let's just say that. If you want to read it, you can become a Blooming tier patron over here and get access to it. I also wrote a blog about my feelings about the Switch 2's potentially grim future. You can read it here. If you want to get notified about all the blogs I write, you can subscribe to my newsletter here.