I liked this one a lot! A few things didn't quite land for me, especially in terms of how some of the themes were handled in the second half, but the level of effort and ambition in even trying to manage all those themes were impressive.
Working through each criterion, spoilers from this point forward:
Implementation of Theme:
As mentioned, there are a lot of themes at play here, but for evaluating this category we're focusing on the jam ones, and I don't feel like these were handled very convincingly for me. The primary "light in the darkness" here for me appears to be the sense of community that pulls the MC out of his negative emotional spiral (or I guess maybe doesn't depending on the choice you make at the end), but I think my issue here is primarily about how this fits into the "my wolf" theme. Obviously there's not a romantic connection between the MC and Zane here, which is fine, but even as a friend guiding the MC towards that "light" it's not really all there. Sure, he's the character we see the most often, but I'm not sure his role of changing the MC's mind of how to evaluate his life is really all that more important than Sarah's or Fern's or Forsyth's. He's just one part of the bigger picture.
Story:
I thought the characters were mostly handled well, with each of our main cast feeling fairly fleshed out, even the ones that don't get a ton of screentime (there are some exceptions. You could probably cut Jean entirely and you wouldn't be missing much). Everyone has their endearing qualities, as well as their flaws, (honestly I felt like most of the cast besides Zane [backstory notwithstanding] and Sarah was kind of a prick, especially the MC - I'm glad he got called out for that at the end), and this did a lot for making them feel like real people rather than just tools to move the plot and themes forward.
One aspect of the MC I wish we had delved into a little more though was his relationship. From my closest experience to the events of this VN, I put way too much of the burden of coping with those changes on my partner, and that ended up leading to some strife in the long run. I'm not saying the MC's boyfriend has to be an integral part of the plot or anything, especially since it's a jam and time and space are limited, but it did feel weird that he was noticeably absent from the entire story after the first scene. Great job really capturing the anxiety of job searching and constantly receiving soulless rejection emails though.
Regarding the shift into spookiness, I did feel that this was telegraphed plenty with the swiping at the closet, the ominous red glow when the MC is trying to find a first aid kit for his dumb ass, and Fern's little slips about the teams. I certainly don't have a problem with the story going there; if anything I was getting a little antsy for it to get going after so much slice of life in the early stages. I do have a few issues though:
1) The grime gremlin (grimelin? Yes): If it was intended to be actually spooky, it kinda... wasn't? I feel like this was the intention with how casually Zane dealt with it, but it felt a bit anticlimactic from that sense. I thought where we going was more along the lines of MC discovers the threat contemporaneously with the other workers, and their reaction helps continue to change how he feels about them, but everyone just kinda shrugging the grimelins off felt like kind of a letdown. Also, if the grimelin leaves a trail of yuck everywhere it goes, why weren't there any traces when it tried to attack the MC on night 1?
2) Effect on theme: This is probably the biggest sticking point in the game for me. So much of the first half of this VN is built around the MC learning not to be a dick to people and assume what they do or don't find value in based on his biased notions of prestige. The absolute bludgeoning the MC takes from Sarah for assuming what he believes to be mundane and unfulfilling is necessarily mundane and unfulfilling for everyone especially stands out. Introducing the whole Buffy the Grimelin Slayer angle severely undercuts that message for me since the school custodians are objectively not doing something mundane and unfulfilling. They're protecting the world from some weird eldritch sewer demon. This changes the message from "MC receives a change in perspective by looking at his current circumstances in a new light" to "MC clearly did not have enough information to fully assess the situation," which comes off far weaker to me.
A couple other quick points:
1) I didn't fully buy the MC's reaction to the initial suggestion of Zane's background. I know he has plenty of preconceived notions and he's kind of a panicky dick and all, but I found it just a little odd that he'd take the word of a random dick at the bar that much on face value. Some of the other evidence presented didn't seem convincing either. I think it's certainly possible that someone, especially someone who may or may not have slept through a few history classes like Zane might have, might be familiar with the phrase "make the trains run on time" while being fully oblivious to the connotation. That sequence might have also benefitted from removing the text conversation between Zane and Fern since that kind of kills the tension in the scenes that follow because the reader is now aware that Zane is on the MC's side. I also think "he's part of my pack now" does not get enough attention as a massive red flag though...
2) This is a complete tangent about an inconsequential detail that literally no one besides me cares about, but is having "red wolves" as a mascot like, racist in this universe? There would be such a weird parallel between the real world Arkansas State University changing their nickname from "Indians" to "Red Wolves" to be less offensive while "Red Wolves" is actually the offensive term in this universe. I don't think this was intentional, but I did find it interesting.
That was... a lot. I really did like this story a lot though! Seriously ^.^"
Presentation:
Liked most of it, sprites and CGs were good. Zane decking the ox was a particular highlight for the latter. Music was inoffensive but did feel conspicuously absent at times where it didn't necessarily need to be. Also, minor point, but this story appeared to take place in the U.S., but there were some terms like "ute" and "uni" that came up that are not parts of the American lexicon. They didn't like, completely break immersion or anything, but it did distinctly give the impression of a story that takes place in America written by an Australian.
Creativity:
As stated above, this VN was ambitious. Maybe not in terms of gameplay or structure, but we are covering a lot of ground in a relatively short time here. I think this does occasionally lead to some issues as outlined in previous sections, but as a general conclusion it still mostly handled what it set out to do in a very entertaining way. I really can't fault the team for their creativity here.
I'll give this ehhhh... 666 grimelins out of 3,455 mops.