The premise of Ventral is extremely up my alley, and I went in with much excitement!
First, I adore the visual parts of the presentation. Mostly. But we'll get to that. The editing of actual computer screens was fun, the CGs and sprites are all extremely charming. I love the different style used in the sprites and illustrations. I remember seeing art by the author in one of my fav May Wolf entries (By the Shore's end) and it their art was done in a lovely scene that is still stuck in my head. Naro's tie being comically oversized compared to the other two employees is also a neat character design detail I adore.
Sadly, the presentation starts falling apart as the game progresses. The sprites are very sparse, and eventually stop showing up on the screen all together. It is extra a shame because it happens towards the end when we meet the main team and have them plan and debate together. I assume this is due to jam time constraints and I would love to see an updated version with dynamic sprites.
The writing is the aspect I have more issues with. It is serviceable, but not particularly amazing. There are some interesting ideas and moments, like Naro's scatterbrained narration matching their short attention span or canine excitement, or the game smoothly switching to online nametags during the short (and kinda pointless?) texting scene with a friend.
My biggest issue is that it lingers on some things that aren't very important - like everything that happens before the interview, and breezes past some more exciting stuff that deserve more gravity. Do we really need to focus on Naro's morning routine in such length? And then the revelation about being a dog isn't given much room to breathe. The slow descent into absurd and forceful scenarios and slow dread as the situation gets more dire upon entering Ventral isn't given time to have doubt and fear slowly creep into Naro's and the reader's mind. What should have been a horrifying implication about the leaderboard isn't given time to marinate at all. Much of the horror is dulled by this.
There is a good set up of showing the contrast of Naro's mundane morning and the horror job interview and tasks at Ventral. The writing just needs to be more mindful on what is given attention and time to breathe, and which details are included why. For example, the revelation about being turned into a dog is blunted by the fact that there is no indication of Naro's species prior to that. The shower scene could have been a good time to have at least a short line conveying the information that Naro is a human, and anthropomorphic animals aren't normal in this setting.
I really hope we see a continuation of this VN, I'd love to see what crazy direction the story will go and a more polished version. I think all the writing issues could be fixed with help from a well fitting editor.