I have mixed feelings about this game. I definitely liked the concept, and I'm normally a sucker for story driven RPGs. There's several aspects that are well executed, and there's clearly a lot of work that's been put into this game, but there are also some flaws, and it did turn into a bit of a drag.
The intro was excellent and served well as a hook. It's got tons of energy, it's well presented, and the battles strike a good balance between having enough challenge to be interesting while still being something the majority of players can easily make it through.
The world design is rough, and falls into some "average RPG Maker game" traps. The choices of textures for walls and floors is often odd, and often garish and hard to look at. Some areas are weirdly laid out, particularly the house in the beginning and some of the classrooms at the school. There are some places that look like they should be walkable but aren't, and a few that look like they shouldn't be but are. There's not a lot of interactivity, with some NPCs you can't interact with or even bump into.
On the other hand, the train station and some of the shops looked pretty good.
I found the city section annoyingly long and hard to navigate, with inadequate signposting. If it's an area we come back to later, maybe it'll be worthwhile, but it took me a while to get to the end (not least because you can't run in this section) and there were a lot of places I could go into that seemed to serve no purpose. Maybe these places could be closed off with the explanation that it's early in the morning and they're not open yet.
There are also some... I guess I'll call them visual issues because I'm not sure if they're glitches, odd design choices, or engine limitations. The train isn't animated as moving but I saw two sets of tracks with one sliding over the other. The parallax background for the school makes it look like a bit like the previous scene is bleeding through.
I got to the beginning of the investigation section and stopped. Some of this is because I just don't have that much time to play through each game, but to be honest, I was kind of bored by that point. I actually liked the idea of going around and investigating as different characters, but I just didn't really feel motivated enough to do it. I'm not sure exactly where it falls down, but the pacing is just too slow. Once you get to the school, the game really feels bogged down dealing with unimportant things. Which is probably intentional, and works with the themes of the games, but at that point there isn't really anything to keep me engaged. It's not a particularly witty game so it can't ride on humour, and the overarching plotline isn't yet introduced at this point to push me forward.
The writing quality is generally good, but the dialogue could use some proofreading because it's sometimes awkward and hard to follow. Related to the pacing issues, I think that too many lines are spent repeating things that aren't important and not enough making the immediately important parts clear. I wasn't actually sure what I was supposed to be investigating, exactly. There are also quotes around each line for some reason, which I found distracting.
The music works great for the intro but doesn't fit the city section well. Once again, I'm not sure if this is a bug or a weird design choice.
With all that being said, I may come back to this one after the jam when I have time and perhaps some improvements have been made.