*Insert two nickels joke about there being two games that exist named "Afterparty" about dying at a party then beating death in some sort of challenge to un-die yourself*. High marks for ambition on this one, but pretty shaky on execution.
Implementation of Theme:
Not abundantly clear, but I could see there being an interpretation of a light in the dark as finding the spark to continue living when faced with mortal danger. It's good enough for me anyway. To be honest I feel very reticent taking away points in this category unless pretty much the whole project whiffs.
Story:
It's... pretty basic. I don't have a ton to say about it, and I typically have too much to say about everything. Characters are all pretty one note: conqueror is horny, warmonger likes books, famine likes food, death wants to kill you (fair play on that last one I guess). There are some individual lines of dialogue that sparkle, but the tone is a bit inconsistent, especially with the balance between humor and horror. A lot of the dialogue could have really used another proofreading pass to make sure the characters were speaking clearly and naturally. I'm also not really entirely clear what Laine's relationships with the wolves were before the party - were they actually friends? Just coworkers? There's a foundation here but I think there are some blanks to be filled in to make the plot and characters pop.
Ultimately I felt like the writing took a backseat to the gameplay, which brings me to...
Presentation:
As mentioned, very ambitious, but I don't think the gameplay really stuck the landing. I'm not going to stress too much about the sketchy backgrounds or stock sprites since it's a jam and all. Sketchy backgrounds kinda worked aesthetically with the main gameplay anyway, but it was also really difficult to tell the rooms apart so I was basically just clicking around randomly.
Passiv_boi already noted most of the technical issues I encountered, so I'm not going to go into extensive detail, but just for a quick rundown:
- the famine softlock happens for the reason you suggested. The stacking locusts mean if he catches you with a full stack, no matter where you move he shows up there as well.
- famine was the only character who captured me or really put me in any danger at any point.
- I had numerous instances of sprites doubling up when I ghosted one and was attacked by a different one in the next room. Also had some issues with the map not going away when I closed it until I moved to the next room.
- conqueror is useless and never attacked me. I had to literally hunt him down to get the true ending.
- I wouldn't attempt WASD controls unless you can overwrite the "S" key binding. After taking my fourth inadvertent screenshot I just switched to clicking the icons.
- Best strategy I found was just sitting in the starting room and searching on repeat. I don't think I ever ended up stunning any enemies when I got the true ending.
The other big thing I want to mention here is the information dump at the start of the main gameplay section. You start off the tutorial cards with "this is gonna be a lot so bear with me", and maybe it was just me playing the game too late at night or mentally expecting something with the complexity of a traditional VN, but this felt like an understatement. During my first attempt at the gameplay I had absolutely no idea what I was actually supposed to do. I wonder if having a "tutorial" enemy where you walk the player through searching for items, avoiding contact, and the options available during confrontation before dropping them into the full scenario would be helpful for communicating the mechanics and goals of the game.
Creativity:
As stated, numerous problems with the execution, but I can't fault you for the attempt. I can definitely appreciate that you took a wildly different line to most. Only issue I have here is that I think this project stretches the "My Wolf" premise just a bit since the very surface level bonds Laine has with the wolves are very secondary to the gameplay and even the main plot really. Like yes there are wolves and there's romance (kinda) but it's pretty thin. Not enough of a big deal for me to really discount you for it though really.
I think this was a good start and I hope you're able to build on this to make some more polished projects in the same vein.