'Carried Cold' is a dark and tragic tale about loss, grief and the ability to let go of that grief. The tale puts you straight into the view point of a someone who is in the midst's of a tragedy, one that they did not know they brought upon themselves, and then seeking a magical being who may yet be able to right it, only to find that there is no salvation, and one must simply let go of the grief they have, else they be consumed by it and may pass it on to those they come into contact next. It reads like a proper folklore-ish tale, with it's not-happy ending, and requiring the reader to seek for meaning in the tragedy, when it's likely there is none to be found. Perhaps, showing the intrinsic purpose of folklore to begin with, a way to make sense of the randomness and unexplained that life has.
The story is about a family of wolves. They go out hunting in a snowstorm, and in their hunt, come across a group of villagers. They kill them for food for them and the rest of their den. However, once the hunting party returns to the den, they find that the snow storm has caused a cave in and the entire rest of their pack had been crushed to death in the den collapse. The father wolf, who was out hunting with his wife and son, start to travel to the top of the mountain to seek help from the mystic fox. Both the wife and son perish on the journey, the father carrying the two bodies in hopes that the mystic fox can do something. He finds the fox, only to learn that the villagers they had killed for food, were on a pilgrimage to assuage the mystic fox, for every year they travel to pay tribute to stop the snow storm. Since they were killed, the mystic fox's snow storm continued, and it was the snowstorm that killed the wolf's pack and family. The wolf pleas that the fox at least stop the storm, and the fox only agrees if the wolf could release his grief of his dead family. The wolf relents and the fox satisfied, never brings about such terrible snow storms again. Like, it's such a good story, that recounting it feels easy enough to pass on from person to person, and is full of tragedy and unknowing self-destruction, and dealing with forces outside your control. It proposes that people realize that sometimes their actions have far reaching consequences and while may provide immediate benefit, could ultimately lead to preventable tragedy. I really appreciate the concept and lessons that a folklore tale should give.
However, while the story is really good, I can't quite say the same for the rest of the visual novel. The presentation almost takes away from the story, and it should never really feel as if the story would be better presented as just a text document to read through. While I appreciate that there's backgrounds to give the ambiance of a snowy mountainside, I think that's all that's ever shown in terms of background scenery. A single sprite of a wolf character is used to represent one of the characters, though it seems to be used for (I believe) two characters. While I think it's admirable to create your own art asset, I would be lying if I didn't say that the style comes off almost too amateurish and unpolished, especially when there were plenty of art sprites that were free to use. While I get that you may have been going for a specific vision of a family of wolves, sometimes you've got to adapt and make changes to make the story work. Additionally, while I don't dislike the heavy use of NVL mode, there could have been more care that went into the appearance and formatting of the NVL text boxes, instead of just leaving it in the default left aligned slightly off center of the screen. The writing was also rather unpolished, with the view point of the narrator changing at least 3 times, from the son, then to the mystical fox as we get his entire backstory of how he came to be, and then the father as he meets the fox, and it always coming off as a weird transition when the change happens. The structure is also rather odd, giving the backstory to the fox in the middle of the wolf story, just comes out of nowhere, and while it makes sense in hindsight, the information could have been exchanged in a more natural way, rather than a immediate cut away. The writing itself is okay, the story does a lot of heavy lifting so even simple prose would be able to carry the gravity of the central themes. I will also say, that it might just be me, but I believe that the characters are all anthropomorphic wolves and foxes, yet, it also comes across that they might also be feral wolves and foxes at some points, so I would suggest trying to make that more clear in establishing your story world. The use of the visual aspect of the visual novel medium would help in this area.
As mentioned before, I thought that the folklore theming was quite strong in this one, feeling like this story is one that could be told for a culture (if it is, I don't really know which one). It's held back a lot by some of the writing structure choices and the default looking nature of the ren'py engine. As a result, it's lacking any identity that would've helped sell the vibe that you were going for: if this was meant to be a folklore tale itself, if it was being told from the father wolf's perspective looking back on the events, if it was a thriller that you witness as it was happening. Even without a lot of artistic skill, there are a lot of ren'py options to make the text look better, the way that you position the sprite on the screen, or emphasizing certain texts.
That all being said, this is a valiant first attempt at a visual novel, and there's definitely some good foundational skills being developed here. Going between text box and NVL mode is a good start, and the story ideas are there. This is one of those situations where you just need to make more visual novels, or just more art pieces in general. Take the time to read more visual novels, even the ones here in the game jam, the short ones also done by some first timers, peak under the hood at some of the script files. See what kinds of techniques and storytelling ideas they're using, find a way to incorporate them into your own works. There are free resources that are provided by the jam, use them, and you can still supplement the free assets with custom ones that you make yourself. Don't feel too limited by your own ideas, adapt and change things up in order to fit what tools and skills you have at hand. You'd be surprised at how many folks have started at similar points and continued to improve.