This one’s interesting - it sets out to convey a very down-to-earth sort of vibe in a way that I really relate to, but I feel as though some elements of the presentation and writing wind up harming the story.
First up is the obvious matter of the audio - I feel as though a more fleshed-out soundscape could really help expand on the setting and make it feel more real - moreso than any other jam game, I really felt the lack of sound effects, music, and ambient noises here.
Secondly, while I think the writing gets across the sense of these characters knowing each other well and having a natural chemistry with each other, I do think it struggles a bit at making sure that the reader feels included in i. It’s a bit hard to explain, but it feels like someone telling a story of what happened, rather than us getting to see it directly - there’s no pauses in dialogue during the banter, no moments of contemplation or of them struggling to put together their next statement - it’s all just a nonstop stream of bits and inside jokes without much description as to what occurs between them.
To give an example, I’ll take the scene of Shiloh meeting up with Liam in the break room in the beginning of the game. The two meet in the crowded break room, dap up, make some small talk, and then Shiloh makes a fool of himself by making a loud alarm clock noise before Liam jokes about tollers getting a weird rep. The problem here is that the crux of the joke - Shiloh making a ton of noise, followed by deafening silence - isn’t delivered in a way that connects with the reader all that much. I’d say this is mostly in the pacing of the writing.
I feel like visual novels have a natural pacing to them - a character says a line, the reader clicks forward to move to the next line, and so on. Each sentence, each click, can be seen as a ‘unit of time’ - similar to seconds in a TV show, or panels in a comic. If a scene is of importance, you’ll want to linger on it, or to do something else to highlight said importance. Here, however, the ‘climax’ of the joke - Shiloh making the absurd noise - is relegated to one half of a ‘unit of time’ by taking up half of a sentence that starts out seemingly casually, and the aftermath is a very simple and very nondescript line - “Everyone in the break room stares at Shiloh.”
I think that, pacing things out better (breaking up shiloh’s joke into multiple lines similar to how a joke would naturally be paced, or fleshing out the description of the silence slightly or describing the new people’s expressions, etc) could have helped slightly here. Likewise, I think sound effects could also help with indicating the pacing of things better (for example, by cutting out the music during the line that’s meant to represent an “awkward silence”).
All of that said, this is just my personal opinion - and I’m certainly not an expert on this stuff, so forgive me if this all just sounded like nonsense. Properly conveying this type of realism is a really difficult thing to do in the medium of visual novels, and I think that even with the flaws I mentioned the VN does a fantastic job of it - both in how the characters speak, and with the broader connection to workplace stories and ‘folklore’ that comes from a very real place.
I haven’t mentioned the art, but it’s also great - there’s a lot of sprite variations, and though the sprites veer towards being slightly meme-y at times, they do a lot to showcase the various characters’ personalities (maybe this is me reading a bit too into things, but the fact that Greyson’s expressions are just as absurd as Liam / Shiloh / Brooke’s expressions tells me everything I need to know about how well he’ll fit in with those three).
I also really liked (read: groaned at) Liam’s repeated attempts at self-sabotaging his potential relationship with Greyson (and was very thankful for his friends’ wingman skills). There’s a lot to like here - and I think this VN manages to do a very tricky thing quite well, which I really appreciate it for. I’m really excited to see what else you put out!