The Windows 98 look made me feel so old :(((

But seriously? That is the most impressive presentation I’ve ever seen in any FVN! I just wish the use of audio could be better.

Writing-wise, it’s refreshing to have such structure and a warm, simple story. There are plenty of rooms to expand the story, but I understand it requires a lot of effort to just assemble one scene.

Fantastic work!

We’ve made a MAY WOLF ‘25 #FurryVN Jam Superlative Form on Google Forms are posting it to everyone’s itch.io pages now.

Voting for the Superlatives ends when the clock strikes July 5’th in New York: https://forms.gle/URongEfqz4swkdFo8

Please contact us or Unagi if there’s an error.

You’re a true genius, you used Renpy to the next level! The story is nice, it’s good to have the my wolf to be the mom’s mc, that’s new! Good job for this vn!

Absolutely next level programming and presentation on this. Just a tour de force on how to bend Renpy over a barrel and make it your bitch. Uuuuuunfortunately I think the emphasis on technical brilliance left things a bit lacking in the narrative department.

Breaking things down by criterion, spoilers from this point forward.

Implementation of Theme:

If it's there, I'm having a little trouble finding it. There are some struggles there that could constitute "darkness" - divorced, or at least estranged, parents, friends moving away, etc. And I could maybe see the "light" as having a support system through it all - the kid's mom is present and supportive the whole time, and she's the one who's there in the literal light in the dark (fireflies) scene. I just don't think it necessarily comes through consistently in the whole narrative.

Story:

Of course, that being said, "narrative" is used pretty loosely in this project. That's not a knock in and of itself - you can have a work that's all about the experience rather than a cohesive "plot". It's just a tough situation for rating the entry since there's this whole category for "story" and try as I may I'm struggling to put the pieces together in anyway that gives a discrete throughline.

Each individual story provides a lot of good character work, especially from primarily a child's perspective, and a lot of the dialogue feels very believable. That feels like an actual, good mom talking to her son, and like an actual dad that does not know how to be a good dad talking to his son. I know some people have criticized the wedding scene, but I can kind of get the inclusion as something the kid would keep around just as a reminder of when things were happy for his parents, something he'd clearly like to see again since he's writing to his dad and agrees to go hunting even though that's something he doesn't want to do.

One side note here - I'm referring to the kid as "the kid", but I'm not sure on the name situation? He's referred to as "Cole" in the happy birthday song, but "Milton" or "Mill" everywhere else, both by his mom and his friend. Is Cole supposed to be a middle name that he used for a while because he didn't want to go by his dad's name? I notice that the log-in screen says Milton too, so maybe he grew more comfortable with using his given name?

Otherwise, a little more context could go a long way. Maybe some more insight into the parents' relationship, why the dad left, etc. Understood that not everything needs to be here, but it feels like there are some opportunities being missed.

Presentation:

I mean, fuck, what else needs to be said here? I'd give it six stars if I could. Probably one of the, if not the coolest, interactive elements I have ever seen in a Renpy project. Just unbelievable. Could have used some more sound in places (the awkward sound effect at the end of the hunting scene was actually a little creepy) but just an incredible job.

Creativity:

Closely related to presentation on this one, obviously the creativity here was off the charts, and this required commensurate effort to actually bring this vision to life. Even the narrative elements, while they could have been more effective, displayed a lot of originality in going for selected pieces of childhood rather than some degree of romance or bonding like a lot of the other entries. Interpreting "my wolf" as "mom" was a really interesting choice and that's the kind of unique idea I love to see. 

Just when I think I’ve found the limit of what RenPy can do, comes a VN that defies my expectation and pushes the engine even further. Absolutely a creative way of storytelling. The presentation reminds me a lot of other ARGs or FMV like “Her Story”. Really well made and executed.

Nonetheless, I’m sorry for not giving a higher rating on story and theme (3 stars, I won’t go lower than that). It’s not that I think it’s bad, but because I’m yearning for more context and motivations in the story. Maybe you could add a “Notes” feature where MC’s monologue can be shown next to the video being played (like having a Notepad program next to the video player.) This would add more depth to the story without breaking the immersion (just my suggestion).

But overall, I’m greatly amazed by what you have made. Thanks for sharing this game out here.

'AV' is quite the demonstration of just how much you can push the Ren'py engine to it's limit in telling a story. The way that it's presented as digitizing old VHS family tape recordings, the way the menus are all different computer applications, and even the way the video files will move along the progress bar as you watch them. All the artifacts are great details, also when the mouse moved on it's own I was pretty in awe. That said, the story being presented is one that is rather mundane and doesn't seem to have a well defined through-line.

The five snippets are the wedding vows of the parents, a birthday party for the son, the father taking the son on a hunting trip, a childhood adventure with his childhood friend, and a talk with the mother while watching fireflies. I feel like the scenes are trying to explore dealing with love, specifically parental love. A lot of inference is going on here, so my theories might not be right, but it feels like the person doing the digitizing is the son, and that his parents might've gotten divorced or separated, and that his mom might also have some type of health issue. During the birthday scene, his father isn't there and it sounds like he may have written a letter to him to show up. During the hunting trip, his father talks about how he should be grateful that he's even around, since he also didn't have a good relationship with his dad, and tries to instill a lesson about 'life isn't fair', maybe to toughen him up cause he's not making life easy. He seems to have a concern for animals and their families, like with the deer and the tadpoles, while also dealing with complicated feelings about his friend moving away. The final one is interesting, since it's tough to decipher what age he might be at and just what he wants to tell someone. I think the theme might just be 'growing up isn't easy', but it's really broad and generalized.

As for the theme, 'a light in the dark', I'm finding it really hard to find the theme in this, the most I'm getting is the fireflies in the night sky, but even that's just one scene, and it's a bit tough to find something figuratively like that in this story. I do appreciate the angle of the 'my wolf' being your wolf-mom, which is sweet. Part of me thinks that this was likely planned to have more videos and it was meant to look back on the memories of the main character's mom. Overall, it's a really neat and effective presentation, but without a more coherent story being told through the video tapes, comes across as a fancy and impressive tech demo.

All I can say, really, is: how the fuck did you do that? This is some masterful Ren'Py wizardry the likes of which I haven't seen since Unagi's VNs. Just brilliant, and I enjoyed the creativity of the presentation for sure. However, I do feel like the gimmick overtook the story a little bit, as the 5 tapes within are pretty much just like, snippets of an ordinary family life. It's a charming little story for sure, though, with its ups and downs, and the minimalism works in its favor. Pretty clever to have the My Wolf actually be the mother. I guess the possessive term still works in that case. Anyways, really neat VN, just wish we got more of it.

Does compel as a formal exercise; Ren'py is stretched to such limits that the result being a little buggy does not surprise (the biggest one I found is window draw order acting weird when you interact with the settings). I appreciate the great care given to restyling all the engine's default menus so seamlessly. There are really no half measures here.

I think my biggest gripe with the story would be that despite arguably functioning as a good introduction to the VN's whole deal, the wedding scene is just kind of without substance or character – it basically amounts to the fact that these two people got married. Luckily, all the other ones do a great job at sketching conflicts and themes that feel purposeful even in their absences, and there are enough different tricks used to keep the game feeling visually engaging throughout.

In contrast, the audio is kind of minimalist to fault. The gimmick would have made a good case for the sadly missing voice acting, and I would also have appreciated even just more ambient loops, but the biggest missed opportunity is the lack of camera foley. The raw physicality of these things isn't captured – they're pretty noisy, and my mind had to add the zooming SFX.

Regardless, AV is just so delightful as a jam submission and succeeds at creating a strong mood without wasting the reader's time. Easy to recommend.

I haven’t delved into the workings of draggable Ren’Py objects, but according to the people on the stream, it’s quite the coding feat! This is a very creative way to frame your story, and the fact that we’re looking at the dad’s computer despite him not showing up in most of the clips is an interesting story hook.

Other than the framing of the scenes as the videos on a computer, they’re somewhat lacklustre in presentation. It’s nearly entirely silent, and I think that audio would be a good way to sell the setting (and the low-quality video feel) even more. Shots are mostly static for the duration of a scene (when the video format is more set up than traditional visual novels to take advantage of camera motion), and there isn’t much of the character movement or changes of expression that I’m used to expecting out of visual novels.

There’s so much we don’t get to see between scenes, so I went looking for pointers of the missing parts, which is a way to keep engaged with the story. The big question of “who is the purple text character?” is something that the presentation lends itself to since the camera can obscure the person behind it. The answers aren’t here yet, though, so I can’t say that certain aspects are foreshadowed well or even if they’re meaningful in the context of the whole story.

I found that scenes often were too long for their own good. The vows are really long (particularly with the repetition), and don’t tell us that much about the couple making them. They’re standard wedding vows delivered in an expected way. I think the point of that scene is to contrast the couple’s wedding happiness with the following (offscreen) divorce, but I wasn’t getting that much happiness from the scene, or what makes this wedding happier or different from any other wedding. It’s a missed opportunity for characterisation.

I don’t know how much of the information in the birthday scene is going to come up later, but that one also overstayed its welcome or could have started later in the scene. It’s a pitiful birthday—no one else except Cole’s mother is here, and the presents are all unexciting. It goes on for quite a while, though, before moving onto the subject of his dad and his feelings towards his parents.

The characters are a highlight of the writing. Other than the wedding scene not telling us very much about the people involved, we see a lot of the characters’ personalities and relationships in the video clips. The birthday scene between Maia and Cole isn’t just a loving mother and son, but this particular loving mother and son. Their banter was interesting to read, and Maia, Cole, and the dad all have distinct voices.

Really cool! I absolutely adore the presentation, and these peaks into milton's life, where we're left to assume things about what happened and how they played out. What his relationships are like now, the speculations of how they've changed, who matters to him. Also Maia... hello I'm looking. I can be not just a step parent, but the parent who stepped up. In all seriousness, I hope you come back to finish this, because it's very good, and very promising.

The UI and the game's aesthetics are clear highlights!

The story, and the way it's presented, are what really caught me though. The use of these vignettes, showing key moments but not necessarily the most important moments, captures a very mundane melancholy of childhood for me. There's no big moment all of it was for - we're simply left with a few puzzle pieces to imagine what the picture might look like. 

Could be a nothing-happens arthouse film out of 5 🙏

UI and presentation were flawless, a well tought concept executed in a great way.

The story really left me wanting for more, not because the video-episodes ends to soon, I really would love to check more of them in the future. 

Absolutely love the computer interface and found family footage aesthetic. Retro, yeah, but also very personal. I definitely think this vn is simultaneously cozy and sad, it has that air of knowing that those times are long since past and having regrets that you'll never be able to resolve. 

I enjoyed the art style of the characters as well, the simply shaded characters pop against the photograph backgrounds really well. The diegetic aspects of the UI, like hiding the game options in My PC and such was a really good touch! 

I personally thought the story was a little short, mostly because the presentation and characters left me wanting more! I think if you spent some time making more clips and adding secrets or player choices, this could shape up to be a really sweet and unique VN. 

Well done!  

I love the retro vibe like others have said; it really took me back to sitting with family and watching home movies. It was cozy and had a small twinge of sadness and regret that nostalgia always brings out for me. 
It was a lovely read. Thank you for your work! This was very enjoyable ^^

This was a cute little story. The retro interface was totally on the spot. Even the art style has that late 2000s feel. The scenes themselves were also enjoyable and nostalgic. It feels like watching old videos and feeling bittersweet about the past. My only issue is that there's not really anything tying the videos together so it feels like there's no story there. Something is missing, like there should be another video that wraps everything up. Oh well, not everything has to be a complete story.

I love the Windows 98 style interface and the digitized VHS tape vibes of the files… it was very nostalgic for me!  I would personally like to see a few more clips in the future, should you decide to continue this.  I understand there not being a full-fledged story per se, as it’s just a selection of clips, much like looking through a friend’s photo album.  The story isn’t for us, but for the people who experienced those events to reminisce on.  Very creative and great presentation!

That was really interesting! The computer aesthetic was done super well through and through and the art goes really well with it. A bit disappointing that only one of the “videos” has audio. The wedding video is pretty boring and really doesn’t add much. The other four are all pretty nice though. The story doesn’t really go anywhere so I’m expecting it to continue!^^

Man this was an incredible experience. Even if these are just 5 short snippets from the past, and they aren't even necessarily sad per se, they give off such a strong nostalgic and melancholic feeling!

The unique aesthetic and form factor of it all really elevated the experience - hell, I even had a ton of fun just browsing the menus and seeing the full extent to which the computer desktop was recreated here!