The art is fantastic (if unfinished) and the story generates some nice atmosphere, but on the whole, I feel like the game falters a little both on the level of idea and execution.

I think the "trapped in a metaphor escape room" premise hits most of the usual delights and pitfalls. The mystery is propulsive, the characters are given stuff to do, and the gradual escalation in weirdness makes for some good horror moments; but when we get to the character drama, it all starts to feel a little artificial because the situation is so blatantly set up to make said drama happen. In this regard, the characters having no idea what's going on maybe hurts the story a little.

Also, I feel like something this short really needs to land all the imagery connecting, but that doesn't happen here. The two biggest things are the drowning motif and being trapped in a basement, and how they relate to each other remains too vague for my liking. I was waiting for the basement to start flooding or something (though that might have been just due to watching too many Tsai Ming-liang movies lately).

Prose-wise, there are a lot of pretty good lines, but some editing and polishing would go a long way. Many paragraphs are broken up across text boxes, which is probably intentional but feels like an error and is hard to read every time; in a visual novel, you really want every line to be complete and self-contained.

"Drowned" is what I would describe as an unnerving horror short story. Like most horror stories, when reading it the first time, not everything is as it seems, and there's going to be twists and turns until you find out what the metaphor for the story was all along. I'm starting to find that it's a matter of preference and taste on whether a visual novel should answer all the questions it presents, or if it's better to allow the reader to do the heavy lifting, and this is a story where I feel it leans more towards the latter. My impression is that this is one of those 'metaphorical mind palaces' that happen right before a character is about to die (or is dead), a way for the character to unpack any thoughts and traumas before either surviving or dying. And unpack traumas is what this main character did. Whether the drama unfolding based around high school teenage gay melodrama was substantial enough to warrant such a plot or conflict, is going to be up to personal taste again. Personally, I felt like the drama and guilt that the main character felt wasn't fully explored enough, though I wonder if that leads back to having the reader fill in the blanks. That being said, that might be on purpose for there to be multiple interpretations. The one room design of the art and the perspective backgrounds/doors are really well made and surprisingly detailed, that's the strongest suit of this visual novel. Overall, very unnerving visual novel, and I think that's what you were going for, so I think you got what you were setting out to do.

A short VN, but there's a lot to love in this small package. This VN is wild, bizarre, even terrifying. It throws the reader immediately in a scary situation (a kidnapping), but then the situation morphs into another scary situation (psychotic break in an institution), and it doesn't even end there, as the ending reveals the truth which is even worse. From one bad situation to another worse one, which is a great premise for a horror VN. The writing is jarring, jumping back and forth from the past to the present, which is a clear sign of the eventual mental breakdown. One thing I did have to comment on though was the mixed metaphors at the start, ie, why are bloody claws involved in a drowning? But the rest of the VN is nice, and the characters are wonderfully expressive. There's just one hand-drawn background, but it's great. The best part is how subtly it changes over the course of the story, until it isn't subtle anymore of course, complete with some trippy horror CGs. Once again, a great bite-sized burst of emotions, and a good experience for a jam VN.

Was a bit confused at first (and I'm still not 100% on a few details) but on a second reading it really clicked and oh boy this was cleverly done. 

I think others have already pointed out my primary knocks on this, which are:

1) Some missing polish on typos, dialogue sprites for Marcos, and other things like missing dialogue tags. In a story where most of the information delivery is subtle like this one, each detail can be extremely important so not knowing whether something was a mistake or an intentional decision can affect how you interpret what's going on. For example, the line "Don't patronize me Marcos..." seems like it's supposed to be spoken by Rafael, but with the tag missing I'm not sure whether that's an error or supposed to be Marcos' internal monologue slipping. 

2) The middle of the story is a bit awkwardly paced. There are some lines and details that could probably be cut or adjusted, like the exchange about Rafael staying home and playing video games while Marcos works out. I can see where you might be trying to go with that by establishing how alone Rafael is/was/feels/felt, but you already set this up better elsewhere and this particular exchange doesn't really add much, especially past the halfway point in the script when things should really be starting to ramp up.

Spoiler warning (more minor than normal though, honestly) for the plot from this point forward.

Pretty much everything regarding the central metaphor and the imagery surrounding that was fantastic - on second reading, it becomes much clearer how brilliant the intro is at setting that up. As others have mentioned, the ways things begin changing in the background is really well done, some of which (the memories box) I didn't even notice the first time through, though toolbox smiley face is still definitely my favorite. This is my favorite kind of horror - the kind that makes you feel uneasy and gets under your skin rather than SPOOKYGHOSTFACE dopamine hits. Usually I'm not a huge fan of Owl Creek Bridge-type plots but the execution really sold this for me. 

I'm not quite clear on a few things like what the "accident" was, what exactly Rafa's fate was between then and current events, and how those two might be related, but I can also see those being intentionally vague. Like I know the most important part is just that Marcos is consumed by his guilt, but maybe just another clue or two as to why exactly that guilt manifested would be helpful.  

This was great work though and everyone on the team should be really happy with this one. 

Final rating of 29 loops of the Sonic the Hedgehog tense underwater music out of 2 concrete shoes. 

For critques: A slow start that I feel spends too much time filling space rather than establishing the themes that come up later, and kinda stilted dialogue but that's where it ends, because I really liked this. I was able to cotton onto the metaphor pretty early and felt rewarded for that. The slow changes to the background that are only obvious once you notice. The morgue doors with two corpses for two characters. The water sound that continues through the start. The reference to the things in the background being pulled from TV; memory. Just a fantastic use of the medium to establish these themes and set up the ending. I love when people use the medium to merge with the themes like you did, that's something I ALWAYS love to see, give yourself a pat on the back for that one. God I really fucking liked this.