If I had three wishes, they'd be something along the lines of: 1) world peace; 2) armoredopossum gets a quadrillion dollars; and 3) sliding tile puzzles are eradicated from the universe.
So from the first time I opened this one up and saw the sliding tile puzzle on the main menu, I've been punting this one down the line. Fortunately, all the sliding tile puzzles in the game are actually skippable, but, to echo what many others have said, while this one is a really creative idea and use of Renpy, I don't think the gameplay really worked for me.
Moving into the breakdown, spoilers from this point forward.
Implementation of Theme:
Couldn't be more explicit in the true ending - "I had to find what was left, the light in the dark". So implementation 1 is the effect of Spoilerwolf on Gabriel's personal struggles, and then we have a few others like Azyel's previous role in that position and the desire to regain Gabriel's memories and the literal dark mazes that coincide with that. It's all there, I really can't fault you for trying to work the theme into this.
Story:
This one's a bit tougher to evaluate here than in some other entries. What's actually there I think is mostly fine, if a little sparse - puzzles notwithstanding (we'll get to that) I think the reveals are well-paced. With almost every memory I felt like I could comfortably guess the next step, but not the entire narrative. By the time we hit the end of the last maze, I had the timeline pretty well figured out and it was nice to come to that revelation. Two issues here:
1) the time between story segments varies greatly on how quickly you're able to complete the puzzle segments, and considering I found these to be rather time consuming and tedious, the bits and pieces you get for fumbling around a maze for 30 minutes don't feel all that rewarding. To echo sentiments shared by others, I don't think I really got any catharsis from getting the true ending; I was more just happy to be done.
2) we get a fair bit of characterization for Gabriel through his interactions with Atma and Azyel (maybe, if all of that is his real personality) but the characterization for Spoilerwolf is much more scant. For what is supposed to be the one of the central focuses of the narrative, we really don't get much of a view of who Spoilerwolf is or why Gabriel loves him so much other than "because he is husband". I know there's a balance here in not giving the game away too fast in what's supposed to be a mystery, but like I said earlier, a lot of the early breadcrumbs already made it clear where certain plot points were going, so I think there are memories you could have fleshed out more.
Last point I want to make about the story is, boy, we are really glossing over how fucked up Azyel is, aren't we? Like, I know he has that whole thing about wanting to save everyone he knows because of vague afterlife reasons, but that is entirely cancelled out by irreversibly (for all he knows at the time) removing Gabriel's memory of Spoilerwolf, especially for jealous, selfish reasons, and the constant pushing of Gabriel to ditch Spoilerwolf by feeding lies like Spoilerwolf killed him. Spoilerwolf may feel like he did because he's stressed and panicking, but he absolutely did not. Gabriel made a bad decision; Spoilerwolf possessing medication does not make him guilty. Same thing goes for the assertions that Spoilerwolf is bad for Gabriel. None of the flashbacks (except maybe the child bullying thing, but they're well past that) really show any flaws for Spoilerwolf other than being the more passive partner, which isn't really even a problem? With all of this in mind, the kind of lighthearted endings all felt like Azyel was getting off way too easy. I know there's some kind of punishment coming his way, but man, I did not like that guy. I think either the jealousy and attacking Spoilerwolf angle should have been removed to just focus on the saving everyone angle, or he should have been an outright villain.
Presentation:
Sprites are good when we have them, music is mostly good too (though I had to turn it off to focus on the mazes since I couldn't concentrate), and the text itself was well-proofread and free of typos as far as I can recall.
There's not really a "gameplay" section for the review since this is a jam primarily for VNs where that's not really a thing, so I guess that'll go here. As others have said, while the ambition is admirable, the execution is pretty frustrating and tedious. Inconsistent perspectives while navigating through a hundred rooms that look pretty much the same wasn't really fun in practice, and as mentioned, this detracted from the narrative components, which probably should have been the primary focus. I also agree with others in that missing memories, especially in a game where there's already limited story content and opportunities for context, is too much of a punishment for skipping the mazes. You could probably still get the gist from just the sliding puzzles (wedding -> crash -> rehab -> bar, not necessarily in that order), but that wouldn't really be satisfying.
Two other miscellaneous gripes I had with the mazes that I don't think I've seen elsewhere: 1) the navigation arrow was too close to the "switch" icon, and the first time you use one the arrow is right on top of the red end of the "switch", which makes it even harder to see. 2) after playing tons of Renpy games (including like 50 in the past month for the jam), hitting ESC to get to the save screen is a reflex for me, and I got a bit annoyed that it was used as a shortcut for skipping the maze here. It wasn't that big of a deal in the end I suppose, but there's already a big "SKIP MAZE" button on screen, so I'm not sure why a key that was already mapped had to be changed for those segments.
Creativity:
As stated above, there's no shortage of creativity here, especially in terms of game design, even if it didn't really work out in execution. As for the narrative itself, "amnesiac tries to regain memories" isn't the most original concept ever, but I think there were enough spins on it with the afterlife elements to give you credit.
Generally, really good effort, just maybe have a bit more mercy on the puzzles next time. ^.^"