With the jam submission seemingly only being a very, very short teaser, not much can be said about the story. I guess it's true that it doesn't start with a strong hook; not much about how the apocalyptic scenario is described or how it plays out feels particularly unique or interesting, and with how little context we get so far, it's a struggle to connect with the characters. Actually, the whole Day 1 segment comes off as kind of extraneous – I don't think the game gets a lot from going through the motions of the protagonist preparing for the journey instead of just starting with them on the road.

There are plenty of nice visual touches, and the opening sequence manages to strike a mood, but it's all a bit too much sometimes. The formatting is especially aggressive in a way that hurts more than it helps. It's not really necessary for a word to be simultaneously bold, italic, and in quotes, and I didn't get the significance of a lot of the narration being centered.

For all the bells and whistles, I think the VN would benefit from being more confident as a piece of writing and letting its prose and dialogue drive the story. It just feels too often that how text is presented is more of a concern than what it says.

'Immolation' is an survival/apocalypse story. So far, this story is considered a teaser, so all that's present so far is the set up for the larger plot. The neatest aspect to this teaser is the presentation and use of text and visual effects to sell the story. Stuff from all the text messages on a phone, to the change from a text box to dialog to center of the screen text for passage of time are really neat effects. Even the custom art assets using the community sprites are neat, like the news on the tv or the custom polaroid pictures.

The story doesn't give too much clues into what the direction of this story is going to be. It could be a classic 'closed room drama' where all the characters hold out until it's safe to return to society, it could be a road trip style plot with the main character and his neighbor as they travel to the safe zone. It might turn thriller or erotic, there's just a lot of ways it could go. So until it's does, I wish you luck on continuing to work on this project and see it to completion. If not, I hope it was an educational experience and you learned a bunch of techniques for future projects.