Alright man, so the way I'm doing these reviews is to go through each jam criterion one by one. I'd usually start from the top with "Implementation of Theme", but for this one I have to start with presentation since that really colors the rest of the categories.
Presentation:
I'm not entirely sure whether this is entirely the game's fault or if there's an issue on my end, but this game barely functions. Game loads up, there's no cursor, and the only way I can even get it started is by wildly wiggling my mouse around the screen until I hit the "Start Game" button basically on accident. From there, the only way I was able to advance the dialogue was by hitting Tab and then Space. Nothing else did anything, and the other buttons on the UI appeared to be inaccessible.
Throughout what I was able to see, there were weird issues with models being misshapen and distended, and after the cinematic sequence where Clerre is self-reflecting (which was cool!) I'm taken to a free roam area that looks very unfinished, in which Ehrain is just... T-posing? And where there doesn't seem to be anything to do or interact with. It looked like maybe I needed to go up a set of stairs and over a rock bridge to the giant flower thing, but I clipped right through the rock bridge and there was no way to get back to the other side. I dropped off the edge of the map to see if that would respawn me and that crashed the game to desktop. I'm honestly not even sure if that free-roam area was meant to be part of the game or if it was supposed to end after the cinematic sequence.
Like I said, maybe there are some local issues, but I run Unity games all the time with no problem, so I think there may be some major technical issues with the current build.
Story:
Couldn't follow it, to be honest. Part of that may be influenced by the technical issues, but I genuinely have no idea who these characters are or what they mean to each other. Store page says Ehrain was responsible for some kind of catastrophe, but I didn't get any of that other than one vague reference to a murder. Store page also says we're supposed to be in a ruined town, but from one angle it looks like the setting is a cave and from the other it looks like a generic factory or warehouse or something.
I can glean Clerre is an engineer (?) that likes math (?) and that Ehrain is not an engineer (?) and has scars (?) which Clerre does not find endearing (?). Some of the individual lines were wittily written but there really seems to be some connective tissue missing.
Implementation of Theme:
Well, there's a literal lantern in a literal dark area. So there's that. But as previously stated, I just don't understand what else is going on here to be able to see if there's additional metaphor going on or not.
Creativity:
I admire the ambition of using 3D models and going above and beyond to try to do something more complicated in Unity rather than putting together a standard Renpy VN, and the cinematic sequence I mentioned was really visually interesting. However, as discussed, the technical issues are really holding this one back at the moment. Would love to see a patched version of this to better understand the story and characters.