Honestly the most shocking thing is that out of everything that hit close to home with this VN the one that hit too close to home was the comment about living in SoCal and never going to the beach. Just a shoryuken to my soul right there.
Ahem. Anyway.
I really liked it. Probably one of my personal favorites of the jam so far even if there are a couple issues holding it back from perfection.
Spoilers from this point forward.
Implementation of Theme:
Yes there's a literal light of the laptop screen in the darkness that also mirrors the "darkness" of the characters' lives in which they constantly feel the need to hide who they truly are. All well and good, but I think there's also an attempt here to have the main two characters being "lights" for each other, and I think this is done alright. It's certainly stronger in the first half when they're guiding each other in self-discovery, but the very abrupt ending to that phase calls to mind more of a spark than a consistent light, and when they reunite both of them seem to be doing fine enough that there really doesn't feel like there's much "darkness" there. Maybe it's semantics and I'm not making sense to anyone other than myself. I'm not really discounting you for it either way.
Story:
The two main characters are written very convincingly, and as someone who was probably around the same age during the first phase of this story there is a lot of nostalgia attached for me, with both positive and negative connotations. A lot of this felt written from experience, and that shows in the realism of their internal thoughts and internet and in-person interactions (mostly. There were a couple lines that immediately made me think "a thirteen year old didn't write that").
With that said, I think there were a few pacing issues that held this one back a bit. I'm not questioning the sudden block and ghosting after the fight; that sounds exactly like something a fourteen year old would do. It just felt like things were paced much more methodically before and during the con, and were then really rushed from that point on. Like there were a few details or interactions missing that maybe could have smoothed that section out a bit. The ending to the story was also very abrupt. Having an open ending is totally fine, but the VN seemed to practically end mid-thought.
Presentation:
I really loved the way this game looked. Everything from the UI to the sprites and CGs to the music and laptop screens did a great job of capturing both the setting and emotions of the scenes. Very few typos or other language errors throughout, which is also greatly appreciated.
As others have said, I strongly encourage you to take down the .04 version unless that violates the rules of the jam somehow. When I saw three download links, my dumb square brain processed that as Win/Mac/Android and not "one of these is older than the others" and I downloaded the .04 version. I actually didn't encounter any problems while playing since I cruised right through in one go, but when going back through to write the review, hitting ESC caused an error which is... suboptimal for a Renpy game. It looks like some issues were fixed with the updated build, but I wouldn't want anyone else to be confused.
Creativity:
This was an interesting look into trans issues and their relationship with growing internet (and broader American) culture in the late 00s and early 10s, and adding the furry elements actually made this even more interesting as a kind of thought experiment. Anthro faces typically come off more androgynous by default than human ones, and while this probably wouldn't be exactly the same in the "real world" universe where this VN is presented as opposed to our world's furry art (where often basically all you need to make a "masculine" anthro character "feminine" is tack on boobs and eyelashes), it seems like transitioning might be easier, at least visually (not psychologically or societally), in the furry realm. But what happens when you have an anthro-specific biological trait like a fur pattern that is unique to one sex? I don't really have an answer for that. Honestly, it seems like the VN doesn't really either since that's kinda glossed over in the epilogue. But regardless it's still interesting to consider.