'Its You Again and Again' is a conceptual romance about a universe jumper who falls in love with the same guy over and over again in the different universes he jumps to. It's an intriguing magic/sci-fi premise that examines the role that the individual has against forces of the universe they have no control over. I really appreciate and love this premise as in fiction it truly takes the concept to an extreme point, "What if you had something so out of your control, that randomly out of nowhere, you literally lose everything and everyone you know and have to make do and survive again from point zero?" How does one have a positive mindset about that? When folks try to offer advice or support, how can one do so without coming off a patronizing or unsympathetic? I'm pretty sure this is reminiscent of a Doctor Who story arc, but aside from that, this story does well to immerse the reader into what it's like following Kali (the main guy), as they grapple with the reality of their situation and look to find happiness and companionship.
The story is deceptively simple, as it starts out with a classic meet-cute, a dinner followed by a hook-up back at the wolf's place. The dinner conversation is interesting as it cuts away to the folklore (of this folklore game jam) which involves the name of a town Pinefall, and how the moral of the story is to take only what you need. Kali is really cagey about his past and why he disappears for lengths of time, and that's because he literally disappears into an alternate universe, where he has to make do and survive with only the clothes on his back (in the first jump he's literally in just his underwear). He ends up doing another meet-cute with a wolf that looks suspiciously like the wolf he went on a date with. It then follows a montage of universe hops, each time running into that world's version of the wolf. Until he finally gets back to the first world and can meet up with the first wolf again a year later. Unfortunately as he's explaining his circumstance and getting accused of lying, he jumps back to his original home universe, a world that succumbed to a zombie apocalypse. Of course he finds his wolf there too, but this one is infected and he has to kill him to keep the host from spreading. Then Kali goes on his dark night of the soul journey giving up on trying to contact his wolf as he continues to jump worlds. Then eventually getting back to the first one again and it all works out, I think.
The presentation is cute and simple, and its surprising how varied the backgrounds and character designs end up being as the story progresses. There's some great shots of tail wagging and the bits where the story shifts into folklore mode are the most impactful parts, in my opinion. The way the puppetry and the storybook quality moments just stand out and have so much character are really great for the resources that you have. The music is simple and effective at setting the mood, even if it's fairly sparse. The moments where the scene changes suddenly is also really impactful as well. The writing quality gets the job done, I don't think I was ever particularly confused about how a scene was going until Kali started getting a little bit 'train of thought' as he monologued about his situation. I will say that the inclusion of the hypnosis element, introduced early to explain how Kali is able to easily survive upon universe jumping by mooching off a random stranger and wiping their memory of him, I expected it to be a more integral part of the story. I suppose that the story was more interested in the struggle of involuntary universe jumping, that it didn't also want to have to grapple with the morality of manipulating people for your own survival, or other pesky reality difficulties like different languages or different cultures.
The folklore element, while I think tied into the story thematically about 'taking what you need' in a sort of selfishly taking his wolf's love and affection, but I don't know how effective it was in combining the two elements. Like, is Kali being punished for upsetting a fey creature? I think there was a conversation about the value of depressing stories vs uplifting stories, and how one may have more value than the other based on who is reading it, but it also never quite settles on answering that question, instead just letting the story play out and making the reader decide if it was uplifting or depressing. The story itself is definitely the most creative aspect of this visual novel, as it's a crazy concept, and there's a lot of details that could really make this story not work if you look too closely at the details, but I think it also works well as a metaphor for just any other kind of unfortunate situation where the person has no agency in how it happens to them. It's one of those stories that is so unrealistic that it asks the reader to suspend their disbelief in order to ponder what could reasonably be done and how would one actually respond to such an terrible circumstance.
It's great to see KnowIt continue to make visual novels in his unique style, always coming up with the wildest plot devices and worlds for his characters to exist in. This one is a step up, I feel since it tells a complete story within the bounds of the game jam on an interesting premise. Something that I would offer to consider is exploring that cut-out puppet style of art in one of your future visual novel projects. It came across really effectively, and I think you could do something really interesting expanding on that particular art style. An entire VN in that style could stand out crazy in another game jam you might do. Writing wise, I would say you're really good at having these crazy premises, but then I think you end up ignoring some of the natural conflicts and friction that those premises would bring up. While some mysteries don't always need to be solved in order to tell the story you want to tell, they can end up feeling like plot conveniences if there isn't some kind of rule system for them. Still, the core of the story is that a kindhearted soul can come in many forms, but still at it's core be good, and I think that's a worthwhile theme to express