'Efforts' is like a fable or some kind of novella about a couple of witches looking for a cat. There's certainly a stylization going on with this visual novel, from the vertical text/paragraph box that's used to focus your attention on either a character in the background or straight on the text based on it's position and how much of a background is visible, which I think it a really cool way of adding in an additional narrative layer from the perspective of the protagonist. It's an interesting way of showing the aloof nature of the main witch and their attitude towards confrontation and conflict. It's kind of a neat portrayal of a motto of 'ignore the haters'. The character designs are also neat with each one showing some world building about this world of magic, requiring a sacrifice of the body to perform it. That being said, the plot is rather light, since it feels like none of the characters really want to be in this story, and with that it's hard for me to really root for any of them. There's some kind of conflict of ideals between pacifism and confrontation, but it just leaves it up to the reader to decide on the best mindset without giving too much evidence to either side. This one would be a hard recommend for others to read, since I think the story is trying to go for a cozy vibe, but it ends up more in the artsy vibe, and what it has to offer is very much like the protagonist, grey.
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Thanks for reading my novel!
And yeah the plot could have been stronger. I had to rewrite it from the ground up already, so I can see it being weak on this side. Tried to go for a small tale vibe, so at least that got shown!
My main try with this jam entry was using the textbox to also tell a story. I have failed in readability, cause a lot of people told me already that the text is quite small. Nonetheless, happy that this got shown through!