'The Wolf Beyond the Table' is a drama the explores themes of forgiveness and accountability, at least that's my interpretation of it. It's a story about you (the self-insert reader) who has been absent from a friend group's DnD game night for an unspecified amount of time, finally coming back to join the group for a night of roleplaying and reconnecting. It tries to convey the ability that DnD and roleplaying has as a way to explore difficult topics, as the lines between reality and fantasy blur.
The main plot seems to revolve around the relationship between the self-insert and the friend group. The main character grappling with their anxiety or self-doubt and the friend group wanting an answer for the lack of communication. Facilitated by the DM wolf crafting a roleplaying scenario where the self-insert can give their response through the vehicle of roleplaying. In a way, this structure gives a lot of control to the reader/self-insert to be able to craft their own protagonist's personality and story through the many menu choices that can be made to give a slightly different ending to this story. But, it does put a lot of responsibility on the reader, and the resulting endings are all fairly generic generalizations about forgiveness, patience, and the reconciling process. There aren't really any specifics to draw from for the self-insert character, which leaves the character interactions with the friend group feeling 'floaty'. The characters are all great and distinct from each other as they hold different attitudes towards the returning friend. The roleplaying scenario is also feels fairly non-descript as a result, with the fantasy story drawing from several common folklore tropes and details that, while giving a very evocative and colorful experience, almost come across as random and disconnected iconography. I feel like the choice to let the reader guide the emotional characterization of the self-insert character didn't leave you with much room to create stronger creative choices when it came to the plot line and the character interactions. In a way, this story is showing the resolution to a plot without knowing what the inciting incident is, and expecting the reader to imagine it for themselves.
As an example, the severity of the initial incident that caused the absence could totally change the flavor of this resolution. If the original incident was something minor and mild, then this story could come across as a melodrama or patronizing, while if it was something severe and intense, the story could come across as tragic but inspiring. And there are so many to choose from that could be an inciting incident: a disagreement that happened in the game, a fight that broke out from personal offenses, a rejection from a confession of love that made the whole table weird? Presenting this information to the reader would give them more of an informed choice when they decide the course of actions to take to reconcile the conflict. The choices do seem to follow the lines of being direct, collaborative, or avoidant, and those lines could still be followed, even with additional context given.
On the presentation, the visual and audio design are really well done. I could see that you picked out a fantasy template for the GUI and it was a very nice aesthetic choice. The extra bits of sound effects to emphasize little moments really help immerse the reader. The sprite work/manipulation was good, lots of expression changes and the extra detail to make the talking character be highlighted was effective. The writing description for the monster was also really good. The prose does a lot of heavy lifting, making sure to really capture all the senses it immerse the reader into this world. It makes sense, because in a way, this story is immersing the player in a story within a story. I will say that for a story about a DnD game with details about dice rolling, not very much of that happens. There are tabletop games that are more story focused and don't have as much dice rolling, so that's just a small thing I'd want to point out when it comes to constructing your plot.
As for the theme of folklore, instead of being about a folklore topic, it utilized folklore as a plot detail. You get the misty forest, the amalgamation monster, a children's song, the mysterious boat man, and stuff like a raven feather and torn book pages, which each could be it's own focus of the entire story. I do think that attempting to come up with a custom folklore tale was one of your stand out creative moments, as it did create a spooky and tense atmosphere. However, as each detail comes up, it's then dropped when the next chapter comes around. I don't hate it, since it conveys a character choice for the DM, who seems to like to just homebrew his own stories and made it specifically for the self-insert to have an opportunity to reconcile without it coming across as another argument. But it does take away from any identity this custom folklore would have.
As a first timer entry, I say this is a solid showing, with effective use of the pre-rendered sprites and use of common-use resources like the GUI, music and backgrounds. It was ambitious to provide three flavors of endings with the personality routes, and to weave a narrative to account for all three to end in a similar manner is fun. It's also pretty good writing to do the 'story within a story' approach and still be able to tell what's what without getting confused about what's happening. That being said, I do think that the choice to have the reader make the personality decisions really did leave the protagonist as a blank slate who never even explains why he is the way he is. It's okay to force circumstances on the self-insert and have the reader still put themselves into the character's shoes and asking them what they would do in that situation.