I’ll try my best to remember what I played a few ago.
I don’t know how familiar you are with the kind of IF people enjoy on HOG and COG, but if I’m to make a summary people generally want 4 things: MC customization (gender, appearance, orientation), the possibility to form strong relationships with other characters (most of the time it’s romance but not necessarily), a well-written story (good grammar, rich vocabulary, compelling descriptions, etc) and impactful choices. I will give you feedback on each of these 4 “pillars”
MC customization
The main character is fixed (name, gender, and appearance), but it does not have to be. Your character being a boy has no influence on the story whatsoever. If you give the player the choice to choose their gender and appearance, you will attract a much larger audience (especially if you have no real reason to restrict these attributes).
You also have a good opportunity to execute this at the start of the game when everyone is talking to the camera and presenting themselves.
Relationships to other characters
This kind of game is too short for romance imo, but you could add some more meaningful interactions with the other characters, as it stands now, the only somewhat binding experience is when your friend saves you at the end . Also, you could gender flip one of the friends to be a girl, so you have a more balanced roster of characters, this would also help attract more female readers.
If I think about it, you might add some romance scenes if you want by splitting the group and having separate scenes with them, but it’s ultimately up to you if you think it’s in line with your vision.
Prose
I came across a lot of spelling and grammar errors which are easily corrected using a plugin, I recommend Grammarly for this. For the writing in general, it’s ok, but it could use improving (I appologise as I don’t have any specific examples in mind).
The stats are also formatted strangely in the stats screen and I don’t think that your friend’s hair colors are relevant in the context of the game. It would be better to describe their personalities there, I think.
Choices
Realistically, the game has only one end, the others are just premature exits, which are not very fun (you just leave the house and nothing happens). At the start of the game, I remember there being a strange choice to “skip the history”. You are signaling to me as a reader that this part if not important. If it’s not important, why add it there? Even after reading it, the information from that section is repeated when inside the house.
There is also a point where you can “Warp in time” to read the diary, I don’t think you need to phrase it that way, you can simply just have the player go to the room if they missed that part in the earlier play-through.
And when the ghost comes, all choices have the same outcome, with the ghost poking your friend with the hook under the stairs. And in the final encounter, what you read in the diary has no bearing on the outcome, the player has no agency in that encounter, it’s always the friend saving the day.
I would recommend diversifying the outcomes and giving more agency to the player and eventually having more endings.
