Wow, this is fantastic! Your plan for implementing a theme/narrative here is pretty much genius (reminds me of the Pokemon release strategy).
As I've started working my way through the submissions, it's been difficult to quickly develop a mental category for all the moving parts in a person's submission (usually at least five motifs or important musical ideas of various kinds), especially after just one or two listens. However, what you've done is parse the theme into two (major) parts rather than five (although you still have five subdivisions within each), which is much easier to conceptualize immediately. After that, I can pretty quickly hear parallels between the versions: "Oh, I heard that element in the other version, but it was placed differently! I see what's happening here..."
What a cool soundtrack!