Thank you very much for this detailed review that goes into what you liked about the different parts in my game!
I've always enjoyed playing these hidden object games but was initially put off to create one myself due to the many detailed illustrations I need to draw. I found Through the Cracks super neat how this is all achieved in Ren'Py VN format. As a coding challenge I want to implement a draggable view to give the illusion that the world is quite big (as it does not fit on a single screen), which I believe is quite tricky to do in Ren'Py. So this is also the main reason why it's made in Unity as I already got familiarity with it.
I'm glad you can 'feel' the setting! It was easier to pinpoint after I picked the genre to focus on. At least I can use the excuse that you can't see the characters to be all part of the plan of not being allowed to draw more assets for the O2A2 jam. Truth is, they're kind of faceless abstractions, so besides not having to draw the character designs, I'm happy I don't need to draw a BG either.
You're the first person to comment on the drabbles, and I'm overjoyed about it. I know they are super niche and there's that risk about allotting half of the word count limit to them when I assume that most people care more for the main narrative. At the same time, thanks to the minimalistic nature of this jam, I felt more free to be self-indulgent. When I'm already making a one-off short narrative game, might as well go full on experimental.