I'm about halfway through playing/rating/commenting on all of the entries right now (I'm hoping to get through all of them in the next day or two, you can't escape me this time!), so I think now is a good enough time as any to post some early thoughts.
Starting with everyone else's submissions: I shouldn't be surprised by this but I really am blown away by how creative and different all of the games have looked/felt. Where on earth do you people find the time to do all of this in 36 hours (this especially goes out to the submissions who make use of animations and custom GUIs!!) This isn't just a visual or a narrative thing either, to me at least, each game I've played so far really feels like its own thing, which I really appreciate. I think the delayed theme reveal may have provided everyone a little boost with this as well.
Speaking of the delayed theme reveal, I know for me, finding out about the theme after drafting the script for my VN gave me a chance to let my ideas get weird without honing in on what it should be to reflect the theme. I say this every time because I think it's true every time, so forgive me if I feel like a broken record, but I think this is probably one of the most out-there things I've written. I'm so excited to see people reading and reacting to it!
I moved off of my hobbled together Ren'Py framework this jam to use Narrat, which has been exciting. I try to leave a note on Ren'Py projects that the downloadable version is the best experience, but the majority of plays on my VNs still come from the browser. I'm hoping a Web-native engine makes the experience nicer for the majority of people who read my stuff. There were some stumbles, including a CSS issue I had to clean up at 1am, but the process was pretty smooth. Sooner or later I'll remember how Electron apps work again and make a downloadable version for anyone who wants that.
Had a lot of fun with audio/visuals this time. I hope everyone likes them as much I do. This is my first time doing character sprites for one of these things under a tight timeline, which was interesting! I'm happy with how they came out.
Congrats to everyone who submitted! Excited to see everyone else's thoughts on the games soon. Hoping to start a more serious postmortem once I get through all of the games.