Always happy to play your visual novels! Love the creative formatting, and the art is wonderful. The tone is so eerie!
My only technical critique is the way all the messages in the chat vanish whenever Eli's typing. I understand the efficiency of going back to a blank/default graphic, I just wonder if having a tiny "typing..." graphic with alpha transparency that you re-use and show on top of the other images would have been quick enough to set up? That way you don't need a custom image for every single instance of it.
But hard to say; jam time is limited and it would still require manual positioning based on the most recent message in each image so I understand if that's too tedious. It is a small detail that I feel could smooth the narrative flow just a little by building the sense of immersion.
As for narrative critiques: I think for me, the emotional punch would have been stronger if I understood the motivations of the entity chatting with me, or could at least guess at them more. Tied into that, a little more substance to the conversation that helps reveal the intent or that digs a little more into what they gain from doing this (maybe this was explained and I didn't pick up on it). It felt a tad nebulous to me, but maybe that's just me.
In any case, really cool job!! I look forward to next year's!