I've finally gotten the time to start messing around with implementing the story! I've only got the first few scenes in and I'm finding out that all of the backgrounds are WAY too big for the screen resolution. So those will need to be resized at a later date. The good news is that the sprites are pretty much perfect. I've only got Alice in, at the moment, so I'll have to see how the others look against the backdrops, but it's very promising at the moment.
Alice is...so....small! It's adorable. It kind of feels like she's getting lost in the screen, but I feel like that might be because of the super zoomed in background. I might have to make her (and subsequently the others) sprite a bit bigger so they feel more present, but I'm going to tackle the background resizes first and see if that fixes things.
Another exciting development is that I found some coding for a text message UI that is EXACTLY what I need. It's made by NadiaNova and I'm so excited about it. It also needs resizing and retexturing but that's all polish that can be fixed later. What matters now is that it's super functional. It even allows for pictures to be sent with the messages, so that definitely opens up some spicy options down the line.
I'm so excited!!