I appreciate the boldness in sticking to a fairly monotone color palette and the clean, sleek UI. The VN is simply pleasing to look at despite having somewhat of a lean towards minimalism, and it gives and all the carefully scripted sprite animations and animated scenes a nice extra punch.
Narratively, A Rebound From MARS! takes a while to get going due to waiting for what feels like slightly too long to establish the stakes and the mechanics of the whole thing. Luckily, the comedy, the lush descriptions, and mining the conceit for some smart character moments keep it a breeze to read in spite of the gargantuan – by the jam's standards – length. Maybe it's just this being the first installment in my MAYWOLF2024 journey, but I didn't peruse the Itch page that thoroughly and was genuinely surprised to see this almost hit the word count limit.
As a jam entry, I think the game misses some opportunities to use the theme more thoughtfully; I can see the idea, so it wouldn't surprise to hear all that just didn't fit in.
Recommending a double feature with: UNDER THE SKIN (2013) dir. Jonathan Glazer