The pleasantly minimalist presentation is immaculate right from the title screen. Using a non-standard aspect ratio is a fun choice by itself, but I'm also struck by how well the accompanying images complement it – a single sprite is enough to fill the screen, and the backgrounds heavy in negative space and often obscured by weather are allowed to feel intimate, if not slightly claustrophobic. I think the photographic assets are also just tastefully curated and edited, a real treat for VN background aficionados, and the simple, unpretentious style the sprites are rendered in fits what the project is going for.
Though the nonlinear structure of the narrative is relatively complex, the framing of charting your way through the twists of fate is an interesting way to make navigating through the text feel diegetically justified. Even when I was holding the skip button and mechanically checking if making different choices would reveal something new, it still felt like I was engaging with the story and its themes. It's certainly one of the smoothest implementations of this kind of thing I've come across.
I'm a big fan of the slick prose, too; there's a killer line or two in there, and it's all wonderfully grounded and physical, the premise notwithstanding. As for some small caveats, action comes off as a slight weak point – though detached is not an inappropriate tone to hit in context, the descriptions of violence maybe lean a little bit too far towards perfunctory. Also, it's kind of a shame that the NVL mode segments don't play with paragraph length more, with the game largely sticking to longer blocks of text, since being able to set the pacing and the rhythm that way is one of the big advantages of using it. On the editing side, there's lots of missing punctuation, especially in the dialogue. Other formatting errors like strangely used quotation marks show up from time to time, too – might be worth going through it after the jam.
Fate Itself: precisely the kind of hidden gem you want to discover while digging through game jam entries. The premise feels fresh, and I can always appreciate a fantasy thing that maintains a tight scope and avoids drowning the reader in lore. A worthwhile read, and if it's a test run for something, I'm very excited to see it.