Just played the game. For a short game as this, I think the art was adequate, the music was a nice touch. Sylvia's sprite was well-done. The GUI had minimal customizations, but that is understandable.
As for the story, I commend you for tackling a controversial topic. It was thought-provoking. However, I find that this game has some of the same pitfalls as many other stories about the scientific community - that is, to relegate scientists into predictable caricatures. I'm not sure if this may be intentional or not, but I found both the professor and Sibyl's characters to be fairly flat and unrealistic.
The scientific method is simple. It starts with an observation. Based on it, you ask a question. You predict an answer. You test your prediction. Then you conclude whether your prediction is supported or rejected. Unfortunately, it seems like all three of your scientist characters do not seem to use the scientific method in their studies, which is how scientists are commonly presented in popular culture, but untrue in real life science. With the professor character, I can understand, because even Sibyl calls him a disgrace to the scientific community, but with Sibyl and Ashley, I've really got to wonder how did they get their PhDs (and throughout the story, I wish my forum spam could be on feng shui...) As my expertise is not in botany or zoology, I'm not entirely sure how that kind of research is conducted, but there are botany labs in my research building and I don't see them chopping down a tree to study said tree (I see them growing a lot of plants though...I'm guessing they took the seeds and started cultivating them in order to study them). The reason for this is that science starts with observation, and it is well-known that the more you disrupt a system, the less the observation is representative of the native system. Sibyl's "I don't know if this is the last flower of its kind but let's just dig it up and send it to the lab!" kind of "mad scientist" behaviour is illogical and hardly the way science is usually conducted. Furthermore, Ashley's character is also highly unrealistic, not because science excludes the possibility of the "supernatural", but that by the scientific method, any observation (even be it supernatural) is studied in the same systematic manner. You can't exactly write a forum spam on "I communicated with sky fairies" not because it is necessarily impossible, but that your approach must be replicable in order for a conclusion to be drawn. Even very mundane approaches like "I did an ELISA to quantify the amount of specific protein X in the supernatant" requires multiple replicates to draw a statistical significance in your data. Once again, I'm not saying that it is impossible for you to communicate with sky fairies, but if it were not replicable and therefore you can't reach a conclusion whether your hypothesis is true, then it is not science, and you can't get a science degree for it. There's nothing wrong with something that is not science, but in the same way that you can't get a visual arts degree for writing an epic poem, you can't get a science degree for saying (but providing no replicable evidence) that you can communicate with sky fairies. I think Ashley's character in particular might work better as someone of a different occupation, because while there are many scientists who believe in all sorts of unverifiable things, they still follow the scientific method while conducting their work, because that's just part of the job.
I found it interesting you touched upon issues of patents and grant funding and institutional hierarchy, which are actually major problems in our field of work, but not really in the way you represented. Take patents for instance: I find that patents don't really pose any restrictions on what I can research in my field. I can use patented materials in my research and publish my findings no problem. The problem of scorched earth patents stem from how it prevents other patents from being filed in a similar area, thus making those research less profitable, therefore less commercial support would be received for conducting that kind of research. But if you have the support of government or non-profit organizations? Your research can still be funded. In fact, most academic labs are mostly funded by non-profit sources. Industrial support is more necessary for translating your findings to the clinic (because clinical trials are expensive). In terms of institutional hierarchy, I doubt the professor in this case would even keep two postdocs he hates just to publish mundane things, because funding is actually an issue in most labs. Most of the funding actually goes towards student stipends and post doc/tech salaries, and you get funding only if you get publications. First of all, if something is really mundane, it can't get published (because there's something called a peer-review system). Even if it gets published, it'd be in a low impact journal, which is pretty much equivalent to not getting published in the eyes of grant reviewers (which brings me to another point that government grants don't get approved by politicians...they get approved by peer-reviewers, i.e. other scientists). So why would you hire two post-docs to not do anything while taking a salary that'd be enough for you to hire four or five grad students to publish something that'd get you money? That and usually PIs hire post-docs because they are more experienced than grad students and so they can 1) get their own grant funding 2) submit their own manuscripts with little direction. Therefore, most PIs don't give a flying frick what their post-docs want to publish - they step in when their post-docs can't get published, either by giving them direction or giving them up (firing them). It is more realistic to say that a PI uses a post-doc who he knows is capable, but he hates said post-doc, so after the post-doc gets all the results, turns those results over to someone else for credit. Now that happens all the time...
I guess the point of your VN might not be the "problems of the scientific community" but rather "problems of over-exploitation of natural resources". In that case, why not focus on how we are exploiting natural resources instead? It is not that I think "problems of the scientific community" is not an interesting topic of discussion (I agree there are many problems and I rant all the time about them, just like everybody else about their jobs), but it seems to me that the problems you listed are more what popular media perceives is happening in the field, rather than what actually happens. It really just comes down to "Write what you know. If you don't know, then do your research." Otherwise, the story really loses validity.
So overall, I thought it was an interesting topic to pursue, but the writing can be better developed. You can use a stronger focus on one or two aspects of what you're trying to address rather than jumping all over the place about issues that never get developed beyond your first mention of them
(for instance, now that Sibyl and Ashley are fired, how are they going to get their income for travelling to spread the seeds? I mean, it's great that you mention institutional hierarchy as a problem, but you seem to have the characters bypass it without ever mentioning how they overcame the problem)
I do like the premise of the game, but I think it can be fleshed out further to give the characters more development, and the plot a better resolution.
