I didn't want to imply anything bad about visual novels (I love the Zero Escape series), but I do think they require time to be enjoyed, which is difficult for after a Jam where you want to play many games. Especially since your submission was the first one I played.
You are totally right, we were afraid of this and were planning on trying to make the dialogs shorter while keeping our meta-narrative, but we didn't have time in the end.