"Now I know what you're probably thinking. 'Wow the art is rough'."
Uh, no, actually. I have a lot of thoughts about this one. Quite possibly too many. But that's not one of them.
I don't know if there's a good way to avoid them here, so spoilers for both this VN and IMG_1697 below.
Starting off with the presentation, I think it's actually pretty good. Yes, some of the sprites are unfinished and grayscale but they look totally fine to me (especially considering jam constraints) and I probably wouldn't have even mentioned it if you hadn't brought it up. Music can feel a bit over-sentimental at times, but I rarely felt like it was really obtrusive or overbearing. Ambient SFX when no music track was playing worked nicely as well.
Mechanically, the writing is superb, and this is one of the rare instances where I'm not going to include my boilerplate "this could have benefited from another proofreading pass :)" line because this was already proofread really well, especially for a relatively longer entry from a lone wolf. I did find myself having to roll back quite a few times early due to the timed mid-line pauses since I'm used to clicking through VNs pretty quickly, but this may be more of a personal issue.
Before I get into plot and characters, I want to briefly touch on the narrative structure of this VN and its position as a standalone prequel to IMG_1697. The store page indicates that you don't have to have read IMG_1697 to read this, but I think there are some emotional beats and moments that really don't hit the same without it. For example, while the scene is happy, the dramatic irony of knowing Ransom's mom's fate from 1697 creates a distinct feeling of dread during the early dancing scene that wouldn't be there otherwise (even if a reader might be able to guess that's still headed for a tragic conclusion). There are other smaller moments, like Patrick's introduction probably having far less weight if you don't know who that is, but the biggest one is probably the decision to couch the story in Ryan's frame narrative.
I understand what you're going for here, with the parallels of Ryan writing both about the witch and about Ransom in the two stories in the same setting, but I also feel that the intended sentimentality of Ryan's narrative only works as intended if you know that Ransom is dead and understand the arc that Ryan and GhostRansom went on in 1697. Other than pulling at those heartstrings, the frame narrative doesn't really do much besides give exposition that could have easily been delivered from Ransom's perspective and restate emotional beats that were already much more clearly shown in the first-person scenes. Any lore reasons aside, I think it may have been better to drop the frame narrative entirely and just have the whole thing be in Ransom's perspective.
Finally getting into plot and character, I find the characterization in this a bit frustrating. Purkka had a lot of great thoughts and I don't want to retread that ground too much, but I feel that this is a consistent issue throughout all your works so far - characters are either almost completely, unequivocally good, or completely, unequivocally evil with very little in between. This didn't matter so much for Route 19 which was more of a rollercoaster of escaping the very evil psycho, but with more slow-paced, contemplative works like this and 1697 the cracks start to show a little more.
In 1697, the core "Scooby Gang" of Ryan, Patrick, Ransom, and Walter (outside of one sequence where he's mind-controlled and literally lacks the actus reus, let alone mens rea, to intentionally do harm), as well as Thomas and Andre in the flashback, are presented as totally light side-oriented, fighting entirely for justice and hardly, if ever, having flaws materially contemplated by the narrative. Conversely, David, Samuel, Elisabeth, and Errol are presented purely as antagonists with very little complexity to their actions, or more importantly motivations. Ryan's parents might be the closest the game gets to having someone in the middle, but Ryan, Patrick, and the game itself seem to completely forget about them at the conclusion. The same issue is present here as well.
I think it's interesting (and maybe somewhat telling) that you say you fell in love with Ransom as a character since it seems like the game is constantly making excuses for any flaws he's shown to have. Sure he dumped Ryan for being trans, but that was just him trying to figure things out, and Ryan and his family are both cool with it, and Ransom is actually gay now too so it's no big deal. Sure, Ransom has violent tendencies that aren't all that markedly different from the violence Silas displays (I do not like thing, so I punch thing), but Ransom only acts violent towards cartoonishly evil villains, so it's no big deal. Sure, Ransom displays little to no empathy in understanding that his father is also grieving (I'm gonna be honest with you man, if I just had to rush home to attend my wife and daughter's sudden funeral I probably wouldn't have the energy and presence of mind to cook Thanksgiving dinner either), but then his father also immediately becomes an over-the-top deadbeat asshole, so his lack of empathy is promptly justified.
Taking a closer look at the two "antagonists", Silas is almost overtly a caricature - a slur-spewing, physically and emotionally abusive, entitled and possessive monster that seems to exist just to give Patrick a bit more of a sad backstory and to give Ransom his "and everyone clapped" moment for punching him in the face. I didn't really get the intended catharsis from any of this because it felt far too exaggerated to be compelling. I think you could have easily cut Silas from the narrative entirely and still had Ransom help Ryan meet a Patrick that was sad for some other reason (more general breakup, family trouble, just a typical bad day, take your pick) and you wouldn't be missing anything.
I also deeply question the takeaway that Ransom's punching was the right thing to do. This event takes place on a college campus in 2008, not an open world RPG where frontier justice is acceptable and encouraged. Even setting the homophobia aside, Silas just violently assaulted two people in broad daylight in front of numerous witnesses. He's almost certainly going to be expelled, there could be very real criminal liability, and his life may well be ruined as a result. Ransom dragging Silas into an alley to beat him up would do little other than having those same things apply to him and could also make Silas look more sympathetic to a judge/jury/disciplinary committee than he would if the confrontation was entirely one-sided. This makes the situation worse for both him and his friends, who he probably should have gone to help instead of leaving them bleeding on the ground with randos so he could go play Batman.
Similarly, Errol doesn't really come off like a real person after the funeral. It's one thing to have a relationship deteriorate due to tragedy, but Errol is almost as much of a caricature as Silas, and really this shouldn't be the case - instead of having Errol be another antagonist, it would be much more compelling to actually dive into how each of these characters are processing their grief and show each of them trying to support themselves and each other even if they're failing (ideally resulting in more of a resolution in 1697 than just "'fuck you dad' was the correct answer"). To be honest, I think a Ransom prequel focused much more centrally on his family dynamics would have been much more interesting than splitting it with the gay self-discovery arc.
To touch on the latter, I don't really have all that much to say about the Novembuck part of this Novembuck. Elias doesn't feel particularly remarkable to me, coming across as a two-dimensional supportive boyfriend archetype similar to Patrick in 1697. I also found the conclusion of his presence pretty underwhelming - I get that he needs to be out of the way by the time 1697 starts, but even if Ransom drops out of school, they're both still living in Vermont and at least Ransom has a car. Burlington's no more than 2 hours from almost anywhere in the state, and people do longer distance than that literally all the time. If you wanted to pass it off as a short-term thing that wasn't going anywhere that would be understandable, but if you're going to have a love confession it feels very strange that they wouldn't at least, like, try to see each other on weekends or something.
I know that's a lot (I told you I had too many thoughts) but I really don't think this was bad at all, and I genuinely think you have a lot of talent as a writer and developer. I think really nailing the focus of your narratives and developing complexity with your characters would really help elevate you to the next level though.