Let me preface this by saying that I'm not really squarely in the intended audience for this one. This VN relies pretty heavily on MMO nostalgia, and I've never even played an MMO outside of a brief two-week excursion into Runescape in middle school, so a bunch of the references here were probably lost on me.
That said, there are clearly other themes at play here like with general insecurity about being left out or forgotten that I absolutely can identify with, so I think there's plenty here for someone who isn't as experienced or invested in the specific brand of nostalgia you're going for. That's actually similar to part of why I do this whole dissection thing for every jam entry; I never want anyone to feel like their work is less valuable or valued than anyone else's (and yes, that's probably just a cope to excuse my yapping, but still).
Without further ado then, let's get into the meat of said big, long dissection thing:
Implementation of Theme:
Per Wikipedia: "Tu'er Shen is a Chinese deity who manages love and sex between men. ... He returns from the dead in the form of a leveret (a hare in its first year) in the dream of a village elder." So, yes, the box for "folklore" is absolutely checked. The one issue I have with the use of folklore in this entry is how it's actually weaved into the narrative, which is a bit superficial. Yes the Tu'er Shen deleted gay sidequest sets the backdrop for the final adventure, but it really is just a backdrop. Root and Hugo were already well on their way towards figuring out their situation (hence their hug accidentally triggering the quest), which was already causing tension with Mira. While there are a few musings throughout about censorship of homosexuality in 00s video games, I think the contention that the specific nature of the quest brought these three (especially Root and Hugo) together to be a bit weak. From what we see in the story, it feels like they could've taken any new arduous quest and reached largely the same result.
Story:
I think some of the issues with the implementation of theme discussed above are part of a broader issue with this VN, which is that it can be a bit unfocused. Essentially we have two main conflicts here - the trio's friendship on shaky ground, and a lack of certainty regarding Root and Hugo's relationship, specifically. I'm not really sure how I feel about the resolution of either.
The Mira issue takes up much of the middle of the game (basically all of part 3, per the script), and while this is going on, everything else is pushed to the side. Everything about the Tu'er Shen quest becomes background noise, as does the secondary plot thread with Root and Hugo. There are some issues with this:
1) As alluded to, the whole thematic throughline about the gay sidequest drops out almost entirely here.
2) I understand that all of the characters are socially awkward +/- terminally online, but the conflict here seems like it could be solved with some really basic communication. Literally all Root has to do is tell Mira "Hey I'd love to catch up but I'm tired right now, can we chat this weekend" and all the problems would be solved, but while, again, I get that the characters don't like confrontation, some of the dancing around the issue by saying literally everything except what the core problem is seems to be dragging out the conflict to make it feel larger and more significant.
3) By giving your story a central conflict that feels like it could be solved in five minutes, you give yourself a bit of an issue. When Root and Mira actually talk it out, they do solve it in like five minutes, which, while pleasantly realistic, is a bit underwhelming compared to how long we spent building up this confrontation.
4) Even then, I feel like Root got off very easy. He absolutely was being a dick and I found myself really disliking him. Even in the resolution with Mira he alludes to his apology being more about what she wants to hear than it being totally genuine, and I question how much he really learned from all that.
5) Because this conflict is way more significant than the other (the Mira issue has the risk of breaking up the friendship entirely, while the Root/Hugo issue failing would just mean they're both single a bit longer), it feels like the climax is occurring way too early in the story. Like, yes, there is still an issue to be resolved, but there's another 25% of the VN left where everybody is friends and getting along perfectly fine again and literally just completing an MMO sidequest. You can have that denouement, but there's a reason why the "falling action" part is so much shorter than the "rising action" on a story arc diagram - once that climax is reached, the tension is gone.
Now, sure, there is still some possible tension about whether Root and Hugo that will get together, but to be honest, I barely felt that at all. Sure, there's some hesitation on Root's part in the first visit to the temple, but they're pretty explicitly flirty by the time of the dick plant so I never really felt like there was any tension about them getting together - the confession and decision following the final fight felt like more of a formality than anything.
Getting refocused (maybe ironically) on the subject of focus, there is a lot of material that really could have been cut here. I'll get more into individual lines in the "writing" section, but broadly, we really don't need things like the whole 30 day dungeon delving bit (you don't need this to reinforce anyone's character - just have Mira open up with the secret sidequest. I promise you she's characterized as zany and easily distracted more than enough already) or the backstory for how they all met (there are ways you could possibly make this work, but as is, we get this 80% of the way through the story when all of these characters are extremely well defined and it doesn't add much). Focusing more on fleshing out the primary conflicts could help a lot with the pacing here. '
Two final points here:
1) Maybe this is my lack of experience with MMOs, but I really struggled with what actually was happening on screen. Sometimes it's specified that something is an emote or an interaction, but then we get stuff like blushing, or ears flattening, or noticing the look in someone's eye. Is this just happening in Root's head? Like I can't tell if the narration is trying to present Root's interpretation of events or if it's forgetting sometimes that this is all happening in a video game. Same thing for including verbal fillers in dialogue - why would you type that?
2) I'm not entirely sure what value we got out of setting this specifically in 2011. There's a couple Morenatsu references and one wink-at-the-camera political joke, but that's really it (though I did like the small detail you can catch about figuring out the year by noting all the characters are 25 and that Mira has "1986" in her username). You also might kinda unintentionally give yourself an anachronism here since presumably "chula" is a reference to Echo and (someone can correct me if I'm wrong here) I don't think that existed in any capacity until more like 2014-15.
Writing:
This may be a personal preference, but I would caution the deployment of fourth wall breaks. Like, for example, you have Root and Mira discussing their issues publicly instead of in a private chat, then you explain this with "Because fuck you, that's why." and then the crowd immediately disperses. This doesn't really add anything to the story, and I feel like you're stretching for a joke that doesn't really land. Similar kind of thing with "After all, one of the worst things you can do in a game was break the reader's immersion. So. Yeah. Don't do that." Yes, correct. Cut that line.
There were also some questionable choices made with some of Root's horny interjections, and I'd urge caution with these as well. Especially in a heavily dramatic scene, throwing in something like "And no, I can't even enjoy that mental image right now" just really sucks all the tension out. If the protagonist isn't taking this seriously, why should we?
There were some other weird tonal juxtapositions as well, like discussing Hugo getting disowned before immediately pivoting into jokes about his fanfic writing. Like, that's a pretty traumatic event and I'm not sure how I felt about that so quickly transitioning to comedy.
Presentation/Creativity:
Presentation here I thought was generally pretty good. There were a few moments where I wish we had another background or two (one for the hot springs would have been really useful, even if not much of the plot happens there), but I thought the sprites were great - very expressive with plenty of variations and there were some fun uses of kineticism too. Propeller Mira was a highlight. Music was pretty solid throughout, and the VN was mostly free from proofreading errors, which is always great to see.
Two things to note here: sometimes the flashing arrow to indicate moving to the next line appears in the left center of the text box rather than at the end of the line, and when pausing there's an error that states "Couldn't find file 'gui/gmae_menu.png'".
Despite what it may look like from all the feedback above, I really did enjoy a lot of this. There were definitely spots where the execution could have been a bit smoother and the pacing could have been tighter, but it's clear you had a vision for the story you wanted to tell and I think a lot of that did come across here. Like I said at the top, it's nothing personal; I do this for everyone. 1,500 word essays on jam VNs are my love language, I guess. But I think it would be great to see what else this team can come up with.
Final score of 6 rare mounts out of 4 scrolls freshly pulled from a rabbit's ass.