"Ventral" is a horror drama novel intro that seems to maybe be a little bit meta. This is an cute start to a horror visual novel, and not one that I see much of. Instead of going for the spooky monster route, it's going for more of a liminal corporate space aesthetic, kind of giving me Severance vibes. It does a good job of giving an interesting hook once it finally starts getting going, the idea of developing a game in competition with other teams in order to survive an uncaring monolith of a company. There's a funny detail in just straight up turning into furry people, which I don't hate, since it's a fun fantasy wish fulfillment type of thing, but perhaps with some plot relevance down the line. It does take a while to actually get to the meat of the story, the entire set up of morning routine and breakfast is largely filler and you could've started right in front of the company building. I also wonder if this game is a bit of a meta-commentary about making games for a game jam, the whole idea of making games and having them compete for rewards. The sprite art is really cute, so I'm giving props for that. Overall, this a really nice intro that unfortunately had to contend with a time limit of the game jam, so there's not a way to see what the full vision would have been. Something that I had to learn quick is that writing the script for a visual novel is one of the top priorities if you want to get it done by the deadline, this'll give you experience for your next game jam.