Out of curiosity, what do you mean by "the choice of tense makes the prose a bit awkward"? As far as I can tell, this is written in third-person past tense, similar to the vast majority of popular fiction.
honestly i think i know what they mean, i wrote half the game in present tense and then changed it to past so some of it sounds really weird lol
i also mean that past tense is a bit clunky for visual novels, given that the player can "see" things happening in real time.