For just a brief second there looking at the preview screenshots I thought Shiloh might have been some welcome opossum representation. My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.
For a first time effort, this wasn't bad at all - there's absolutely nothing wrong with some low stakes slice of life and I think you did well to synthesize your real world experiences into a coherent narrative. However, there's definitely a level of polish that separates this submission from the top entries in the jam. That's okay - those things come with time and experience, but for now, let's break it down:
Implementation of Theme:
Yeah let's get this out of the way early. Unless there is some deep cut myth you're referencing here, I'm not seeing it. What we're looking for is "folklore," and I don't think that's really present at all. If you stretch real hard maybe you could argue that the shrine is some kind of folklore, but that is, as stated, quite a stretch to begin with, and even then it's only referenced once and has no material impact on the narrative.
Presentation:
Starting with the good here, the art is solid and there's actually quite a bit more of it than I was expecting. Having several expressions for the primary characters is great (even if I thought some of the expressions themselves were a bit too meme face-y) and I like that we got sprites even for characters that didn't appear very often. Chocco has some great "what if Mr. Peanut Butter was a divorced dad" energy and I'm a bit sad we didn't get to see him more.
All that said, there were a few moments where I wasn't sure if the expression the characters were showing always matched the conversation and there were some bizarre instances of sprites appearing in a scene for a second right before disappearing again with the transition to the next scene. Not sure if you intended to have the sprites appear in the new scene and just got your line order mixed up or something.
The biggest elephant in the room for presentation here is the total absence of sound. While the story is clearly still coherent without music or SFX, audio can be really effective at selling scenes beyond what's visually on screen, and considering the jam does offer stock music assets, I think there should have been at least some attempt to incorporate sound here.
Not to discount the work of your proofreader as I'm sure she caught plenty in your drafts, but there were still a few typos and awkward phrasing. For example, "for the past summer two seasons" which presumably should have been "past two summer seasons" or, to make it cleaner, "past two summers" unless you really felt like "seasons" was necessary to incorporate the employee jargon.
Story/Writing:
The premise here is very simple. Boy meets boy; boy hangs out with boy; boy likes boy; boy kisses boy; result. As stated above, there's nothing wrong with simple, and I think drawing so much from your experiences helped make Liam's and Greyson's dynamic and development feel believable. Everything felt like a plausible event or conversation that could happen between them, and I think their development was well-paced to end where the VN does at a solid first date. On the same vein, I thought the interactions with Shiloh and Brooke also felt like the characters were genuine friends, even if the "Bro. Brooooo. BRO. Bro? Bro." speak was a little much for my taste.
While the conversations worked at a high level, I think one thing to keep in mind is the level of detail you actually need to get them across for the VN. Like, while Shiloh and Liam giving Greyson tips about the job as an intro is good, I don't think we really need to be getting into POS systems and stuff. That may be "lore accurate" so to speak for actual conversations you'd have at work, but your readers are getting dropped into this setting cold and getting too into the weeds can detract from the narrative itself. As another example, we don't really need to know "although motor vehicles aren’t allowed, since the golf cart is a company vehicle we’re fine." It doesn't add anything and you can safely cut that.
While the buildup was good, the story ended pretty abruptly. Not sure if things were cut due to jam constraints, but carrying the story through to the end of the date might have been a more natural place to conclude. It also didn't help that the tone radically shifted leading up to the kiss as well; the dialogue is consistently bro-speak for most of the VN, then goes sappy and dramatic for the last ten lines, there's a kiss CG, and we're done. It's a bit jarring. I think maybe easing into that a bit more as well as giving the characters some room to breathe and react after the initial contact would soften the transition into romance a bit more.
Creativity:
Like I said in the previous section, the narrative here isn't exactly revolutionary; it's simple and straightforward, but I think you injected enough personal flair to elevate it beyond being totally generic. With that said, I think there's also definitely some room for you to stretch your legs and maybe try something a bit more ambitious next time, and to that end I hope you stick with it and keep writing. If you do, I think this is a really solid foundation to build on.
Final score of 12 rapidly minimized fanfic pages out of 3 pairs of underwear that Liam's dream man has never touched.