Hi, so I gave it a shot!
I think it was Yahtzee who said that if there were a psychologist who dealt specifically with RPG characters, the most frequent problem he'd treat would be amnesia, followed closely by kleptomania. That said, nothing wrong with waking up in an alley and knowing nothing about who you are or what's going on. Things don't have to be fantastical in order to engage a player.
But things do have to be going on. I get the impression that someone's probably done something with your identity, and that might have something to do with all the police standing around. This can make for an engaging storyline, but that storyline (at this point) is mostly inferred. Aside from the folks who I assume are barflies at the beginning, nobody has much to say to you. I'm also noticing that you have to be standing on a specific side of a given NPC before they will speak to you, and that many NPCs either "have nothing to say" or are treated as though they are nothing more than wall space. There's lots of stuff like that. I have no idea how to buy from shops -- can't seem to interact with people on the other side of the counter, and I didn't see a "buy" key.
I figure this is because, as you've said, there's a lot of work to do. And that's cool with me, for sure. But I'm not really sure how to get going in this game, or what my impetus for getting going really is. There are a couple of more recent amnesia/identity roguelikelikes, Legerdemain and Dance of Death, who make excellent use of what I guess I'll call a "throttled storyline," where a CRPG is revealed incrementally (and in a dramatically appropriate fashion) as the player progresses past pragmatic obstacles. So far, with 91, I don't really know anything other than that there's a guy who stole my ID and there's a sewer full of spiders. So I guess, as a player, what I would want first of all is a reason to play; I'm not being sarcastic here - I'm talking about a reason why I should want to help this guy find his ID. Otherwise I would probably just have the character walk up to that police barricade and let them know I'd been mugged by the named NPC villain, then find a phone to use and call my fiancee so I could ask her to come and pick me up at 5th and Smith Ave.
What I see right now is a playable state demo with hamsters and rats in the sewer. I'm eager to see more, but I'm not sure what else I can say at this point other than that I wish you the absolute best of luck in the long and difficult task of coding an RPG... is there anything specific you're looking to focus on for starters?
