This is another one that's tough to write about considering there's so much left unexplained/unresolved and I really don't have a full picture yet of everything we're trying to do here, both thematically and in terms of a cohesive plot. Still going to try to break down what I did and didn't like here, so spoilers herein.
Starting with the presentation, even in a jam where it seems like every entry went way above and beyond expectations with presentation, this still stands out to me as particularly impressive. There's a ton of effort in the UI and overall aesthetic, and the sprites, including the talking "animations", came out very nice. Lots of creepy and foreboding backgrounds as well to help sell the tension. The soundscape did feel a bit unbalanced at times, either overly loud and grating with the garbled effects or weirdly quiet, but it's not something that really bothered me.
Writing was mostly fine mechanically, though there were some proofreading errors and, as is often the case with VN jams, another run through for polish would really help.
Moving towards plot and characters, as stated above it's a little complicated to talk about here since we have an almost House of Leaves-esque layered narrative with what's happening in the game we see as well as the supplementary materials. Some of the more... questionable writing choices were thankfully explained as changes made by Daniel in the devlog, like the inclusion of "I just started smoking weed last week and want everyone to know about it" language and the worn-out Russian stereotyping of Boris because nobody "was writing about Ukrainians in the 90s" (eliminating a character's Ukrainian identity in favor of making them a stereotypical Russian is also a wild decision for a project the devlog clarifies is post-COVID and also therefore likely post-Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine).
That said, I still had some trouble getting invested early on - even understanding that these are characters within an amateur game within the narrative of the real life one-person Itch game, everyone still feels a bit too archetypical, kind of like what Cabin in the Woods was deconstructing a decade ago, and they never really felt like a group of friends that would actually exist together, which made it difficult to buy in to the fear of anything happening to any of them.
It's still pretty unclear what exactly happened to them though. One of my main thematic readings of this is that the original script of the game had Ashley and Snow dying, and despite efforts to change this outcome in the current port, the game tries to force this conclusion anyway. Ashley and Snow try to avoid following Trent and Jenn to the house, but Jenn literally assaults them to drag them there anyway; they try to avoid going in the house, but they're teleported inside anyway; the game tries to force the removal of the "Run" option entirely. I don't understand how the pre-jumpscare pit scene fits in here though - maybe that was the game overcorrecting because those characters weren't supposed to die at that specific moment? Also not sure if that jumpscare was supposed to be something that was a function of the "Fountain Man" or whether that was actually a plot point in the game-within-a-game itself.
There are lots of other theories I could toss out, like the hole that removes someone from your memory having something to do with why the Davenport 7 is the Santa Carla 5 in the game, and then there's something about the fountain being what "it" all starts with, with that ending (signifying the start of a real life game series) being credited to Laputan Machine rather than Danny and Ernest. But right now, I would say the biggest issue for me, somewhat paradoxically, is that there are so many mysteries and so many unanswered questions that I don't even really know where the plot goes from here. Like, this game is over, so do we keep following Daniel? Or do we switch to another member of the 7? I do want to see more, but I just have no idea what "more" is even going to look like.
Hopefully that makes at least some degree of sense. Overall, a really solid atmospheric horror entry that may be trying to do too much at once, but looking forward to seeing what you end up doing with this.