I totally agree. Games within games really takes me out of the game @.@;
honestly, if you want this game to have great replay value, you should adopt a simple stat building system and spend your time making as many areas and sex scenes as possible. Ultimately, it's scenes and exploration of the game's world, that will keep this game fun for a long time. Personally, I'd use an old school rpg style stat system for nearly everything. The more you do an act/move, the more powerful you get at it. Elana would level up and gain new skills automatically. The more time a player spends in the game's world and the LESS time they spend in stat windows, trees, mini games ect, the more immersive the game is and that's what really makes the game sexy, immersion. Immersion and kind spiritedness. Way too many fap games are ruined by 2 things, #1 getting bogged down in leveling up and #2 mean spiritedness, like gender dominance (male OR female), S&M, ugly/evil characters sexing, cruel or mean treatment of characters, death, witch craft, usury, ect, ect.
Only mean spirited stuff I've seen in your game so far has been done by the “bad guys” so to speak, which makes sense. The whole pink sucking the guard's souls out their dicks thing seemed a little mean spirited but it seemed like it was just a joke, so I can't complain. especially since, later at night time you seen the actual soul suckers.
Some examples of adding better immersion would be, say, if you dumped the mana recharge rituals and, instead, just had Elana's mana go up any time she sexed with a spiritually charged character. Mister green dick would be top of the list there. You could have sexing with him always an option every time you visited Elana's nest or other special areas. Add a bunch of different scenes with her and green dick for that and there you go, much better immersion.
Another example, as I said before, would be if the more Elana works or steals, the more money she gets from it. Personally, Elana stealing from any of the good guys, doesn't make much sense, especially if it's some one she's become very friendly with from doing a lot of actions on them. If I were going to keep stealing in the game, I would have it be something Elana did on bad guy characters, to get keys, or other special items. Just a thought. :)
here's another piece for you guys btw:
Spoiler (click to show/hide):
I was thinking that one could be for one of the “church” areas. Maybe the catacombs or what ever that dark place is to the left. maybe it's not dark enough for that though. Hope you like it and have a good idea where to put it. I really don't care where in the game any of my tracks end up, so long as they are making people happy. :)