itch.io

"Do robots have dicks?" - Kokichi Oma, 2017

I mean, someone has to be asking the real questions with this premise. 

This one took two tries to really "click" for me. Occasionally, having an atmosphere that's trying too hard to be morose, melancholy, or depressing can circle back to switching me off completely, and I think I got a pretty bad impression of Arron that first run too. But I'm glad I gave it a second go, because I think there really is a lot to dig into (with maybe a few lingering issues).

Spoilers and some real heavy duty speculation from this point forward.

Starting with presentation, like most others, I think it's pretty good! The sheer amount and quality of the images provided in this VN is frankly incredible, and all of them feel thoughtful and intentional. Grayscale can often be a risky choice, but I think it worked well in conveying the atmosphere you were going for. There are some minor gripes I could make here and there, like not really being able to tell the difference between Arron and Margo at the restaurant, but nothing that really materially impacted my experience. For a one-man show, that was all top-notch.

Sound was also very consistent, with oppressive, foreboding tones from the intro that extended basically uninterrupted throughout. To the extent that overwhelming bleakness and melancholy was what you were aiming for, I think it was effective. However, at least personally as stated above, I think there's a point where constantly trying to be as oppressive as possible starts to lose its effect. I think there are some moments, like in the earlier flashbacks to happier times in the relationship, where you could have added a bit of levity to build a more stark contrast with how fraught the second half of the script is. I think you already try to highlight several contrasts (besides the main organic vs. robot one) like Arron being the most festively dressed and least festively behaving at the party, and there was more room to play with this. 

This is a pretty common issue with jam entries, but this one could have used another proofreading pass. Quite a few typos, and while few impacted my understanding (I'm not entirely sure you were using "jilted" right though) some were quite noticeable, like the things that stop your car are "brakes" not "breaks". 

Not sure whether to attribute this to presentation or writing, so I'll leave it in this kinda no man's land area between, but I did not particularly care for the way the disclaimer/warning was deployed. With the way it's worded and placed after the opening cryptic poetry sequence, it came off edgy and pretentious to me and felt more like a brag than a genuine warning. It got one (1) seismic eyeroll out of me and I think it would've been better placed in a more conventional spot on startup or beginning a new game. 

Moving onto writing, I think the "central" theme, if you want to call it that, is pretty clear: Arron, as conveyed to the reader, is afraid of Mal for perceived betrayal, but really Mal is the one that should be afraid of Arron because of the way his paranoia is affecting him. With that said, there's some discussion on this page and the store page about the toxicity of Mal's and Arron's relationship and Arron accordingly being a lying manipulator that was just using Mal to feel good about himself. 

Maybe I'm misreading things, and maybe some of the other commenters that didn't go into much detail were keeping this to themselves, but I think the unreliability of Arron as a narrator isn't being discussed enough in that context. Arron, as presented by the VN, is not a psychopath. He blows the whistle on PHSY because he feels morally compelled to. He refuses to accept the gun (at first). He talks about how he's been trying to "shake" Margo for years but he keeps her in the loop about what's going on. He is self-aware of how callous not focusing on Paul's death looks. 

With that in mind, I don't know if I buy that Arron was really taking advantage of Mal. I think there's reason to believe that he's attempting to convince himself of that as a result of the paranoia caused by the attack on his life, and that the events of this story that take place after the car incident are moreso the unraveling of someone under heavy stress who was invested in the relationship (that likely does have a reflex of pushing people away) than the reveal of a liar who was only in any of this for moments of fleeting satisfaction. The relationship may have been legitimately happy, an unrelated third robot tried to kill Arron, and now Arron is scrambling to justify a whole host of conflicting feelings.

So, yeah, I think there are layers to the narrative here, and there's a lot to unpack and explore with Arron as a character.

With that said, I did find the corporate thriller side of the plot to be a bit lacking. I know it's not The Point, but I really question PHSY's approach to the whole murder thing. Like, I don't see how killing the primary whistleblower, even if you made it look like an accident, would look any less suspicious if you did it the week after a trial. Any public harm and loss of confidence in the corporation has already been done, and nobody's going to just ignore the connection. You could say PHSY is supposed to be so powerful that it doesn't matter, but then why would they have been at any risk from litigation anyway? 

I think one alternative you could have tried here was PHSY not actually trying to kill Arron, but rather just making him think his life was at risk so he could lead them to the real threat, which was Paul (a person who in this version was not involved in the trial - I think it's implied he was involved in the current timeline when Arron says he's meeting someone from court) gathering all the information. Then the assassin bot leaving him and Margo alone would be accounted for, and it would make the tragedy of Arron's betrayal of Mal even more crushing since Arron was never truly at risk of being killed by anyone, much less Mal. 

Overall, there were some hiccups along the way, but I did really like this and it gave me a lot to think about, so a wholehearted Good Job from me. 

Yeahhhh I'm sorry man, this didn't really work for me either. I don't think this was a disaster or anything, but the tone is so uneven and inconsistent that I'm not sure what it wants to be, and I feel like the VN doesn't know what it wants to be either. 

I'll explain what I mean once I get to writing, but I'll just go ahead and jump in, so spoilers ahead.

First off, I want to acknowledge that the presentation here is actually pretty good. Yes, you're using stock jam assets and sounds but I think you do so very effectively, and I appreciate the effort in moving them around, even for short effects like moving a sprite up and down to convey laughter. These are minor details, but I think there's so much emphasis on the writing in the comments that the presentation is getting lost along the way, and I really do think you deserve credit for that. Same goes for the mechanics of the writing - no typos or other errors that I can remember, and the attention to detail there is duly noted. 

Moving onto the writing itself, your response to my topline comment might be "It's a story about naked bucks, what more do you want?" but I never felt like that was really all there was to it. 

Early on, we get double entendres like "Will you be able to handle a huge load on your back?" and metahumor (or at least metahumor-adjacent) lines like "Damn! What is it with all the hot deer I keep running into this week?" that suggest this is supposed to be satirical and silly, but there are also attempts at (apparently; maybe they're supposed to be part of the joke and I'm missing it) serious discussions about nudism and the severe lasting psychological impacts of nudism-fetish-COVID on the protagonist. Ultimately, the jokes never feel consistent enough for it to feel like a comedy and the worldbuilding is so whack that I can't take the serious parts, well, seriously either. 

Like, let's touch on worldbuilding for a bit. Purkka already went into this and I don't want to be too redundant, but let's focus on the following line: "It seems like all anyone wants to talk about nowadays is the latest fashion."

This seems like an attempted jab at consumerism, but the commentary feels half-baked because it, and most of the rest of the VN, presumes that modesty is the only reason people wear clothing. Like, if people did readopt clothing that fast, maybe it's not just because they're chasing shallow trends, but rather that they don't want to be freezing or that they want to wear medical PPE or tell who's on which team in a basketball game. There's a bit in the "debate" about clothing as individual expression, but it seems like we're ignoring all the practical uses of clothing. 

There's plenty more about the "lore" that doesn't make sense too. Besides just 20 years being way too short for clothing to be a lost concept, like, why are there no roads leading to the former town? How'd they even get all the clothes there without trucks and stuff? Razing the town for the dump makes no sense, and neither does its current physical layout - why would there be a random chimney at person-height but no other rubble or remains besides a concrete foundation? Why put soil over a concrete foundation at all? How on earth is there running water at Devon's house? If Devon never had the disease, why doesn't he have regular blankets? Does anyone have regular blankets? What about sheets and towels? Some of the stuff about the town might be intended to be tongue-in-cheek, but it's not really written in a way that makes that clear and not just an oversight.

Again, you might say that none of this is the point and it's not that deep, but the world is on such shaky ground that it makes the drama hard to buy into. To that end, we really don't get all that much about our leads either. They both like being naked (one out of necessity and severe lingering trauma) and they both like paw play and that's... pretty much it. Like, we're supposed to buy into this happy ending with Cliff going to live with Devon, but I have no idea if they have anything else in common or if they'll even like each other after a couple days. You can only give so many footjobs before you gotta find something else to talk about. 

It seems like you had fun making this and I don't want to take that away from you. To be honest, this is one of many times where I wish I could just turn my brain off and not think about the global implications of a setup, but unfortunately this didn't quite land for me. 

"Eh I can knock another one out before bed."

I have made a severe miscalculation.

This one's a bit of a tale of two halves for me, and I think that comes down to your skills as a writer/director: the atmosphere and tension is almost impeccable, with a few moments that legitimately unnerved me. For what appears to be your first effort, there's some seriously impressive horror direction here. On the other hand, the character writing is... a bit thin, and I think if you were able to develop this in addition to the atmosphere you'd have something really special.

Spoilers and such.

Touching on presentation first, there's not a ton going on visually, but what's there is effective enough for what you're trying to convey, especially considering jam constraints. I think all characters basically have two sprites, "casual" and "scared", but considering those are their primary states in the VN, I think it's fine. I actually really like the ghost design as well, and I think it was a good decision in this case introducing him in the daylight so the reader knows what they're afraid of before the haunt truly begins. 

I don't want to harp on it too much, especially since purkka already said everything I wanted to about it, but whatever the vision with Taylor's mane was, I don't think it's working. Everyone else's hair looks consistent with the art style, but Taylor looks like someone took his sprite and then just did a MS Paint spray tool effect around his head. It's a bit distracting and I'm not sure why that decision was made.

In terms of sound, there are some moments, especially in the beginning, that are awkwardly quiet and could use some music, even if it's low volume and low intensity, to accentuate the presentation. Even if you cut it off once we get into spooky territory, it would make the overall aesthetic feel a bit more filled out in those scenes. With that said, the SFX chosen were excellent, and I have special praise for the buildup in the ritual scene. The steady addition of heartbeats with the breathing leading up to the droning was fantastic for building tension. There was one moment in Vic's chapter where "chase music" triggered a bit suddenly and I think this could have benefited from a similar steady escalation rather than being practically a jump scare, but otherwise, great work on the SFX.

Moving onto writing, as stated above, the character work definitely takes a back seat here compared to the tension and atmosphere, and while those things are well done, the lack of any real knowledge about who these people are does impact the reader's investment in their continued existence. I think that, for your strengths in setting the scene, dialogue is an area where you could improve. A lot of the character interactions in the intro (and some later, though there are fewer conversations in general for obvious reasons) feel a bit stilted and robotic, with lots of simple sentences that don't convey much personality or uniqueness. 

Changing the syntax to make lines less direct would probably go a long way to making conversations feel less awkward. Like, "And you know, Vic and I are open. I thought we could fool around or something. You've seemed really depressed lately, I thought it would help cheer you up." seems formal, almost academic. There are ways you could play with the wording of this line to make Taylor seem hesitant, eager, regretful, horny, nervous, any emotion you want to show not only what his intent was, but how he feels about it.

There were also a few moments when the script seemed to vacillate between referring to Vic and June as "they/them" and "she/her" and I'm not sure if this was intended or not.

Regarding the overall plot, I thought it was good, especially for something so short. It's not going to set the world on fire (and personally I actually disagree with Fuze - I like that the ghost isn't a metaphor and is just a creepy stalker with supernatural powers) but as far as setting the backdrop for tension and some creepy scenes goes, I think it works. 

Overall, definitely a few spots that could use improvement, but this was still a really impressive showing and I will be watching your career with great interest. 

"Don't go behind the black door."

FORESHADOWING IS A LITERARY DEVICE-

What's here is really good and engaging thus far, but it's also one of several submissions to this jam that end right as things seem about to really kick off. Being all setup and no payoff at the moment makes it a little tough to evaluate, and I'm honestly glad I didn't have to  rank this against other entries, but my general thoughts are below.

Spoilers and such.

Getting into presentation first, there are a few parts that felt a bit uneven, mostly involving sound, but overall this was very impressive, especially with the limited resources that went into it. I agree with Fuze's comment below about you having a real knack for squeezing every bit of material you can out of stock jam assets, and that's on display here as much as it was in May Wolf. There are some subtle details like the Harlowes being in the background after church and filing out that didn't need to be there, but the extra effort is noted and appreciated, and incorporating the sprites in different ways like the missing poster is a clever use of what's available to you.

The visuals you added were effective as well - it was pretty clear from its introduction that the old computer game was going to be used for creepy effect later, and I think both that and the mask thing create a general feeling of dread and uneasiness without becoming repetitive or relying on cheap jump scares. As previously mentioned though, the sound feels a bit inconsistent. While several scenes are totally fine, there are others where there's no sound at all, and given those are more mundane moments rather than say, cutting the BGM to unsettle the reader and build tension, the lack of music or ambient effects doesn't always feel intentional. 

Mechanically, the VN was meticulously proofread, with very few errors, and everyone's dialogue mostly felt natural, though some of the Josh and Edwin dialogue did feel a bit clunky (not that we have to worry about half of that anymore) and there appeared to be an error when a line that looked like it was supposed to be Simon's was attributed to "Lady" before church.

Story's a bit harder to get into since, as mentioned above, it's difficult to assess setups without knowing the payoffs, but so far the setups are good and succeed at building dread. One could speculate on some aspects of the sinister lurking beneath the surface (I viscerally reacted "RUN BITCH" every time someone said Theo reminded them of Thomas), but right now there's still much of the mystery to be unraveled. I do like how Bailey's parents are given some depth, and the outwardly friendly appearance of the town hiding the sinister beneath is generally a solid aesthetic. It's like Midsommar had an awkward one night stand with Far Cry 5, and I mean that positively.

Luna felt a bit weak to me, and more like an ominous plot device than an actual character. I also see where you might be going in having her be trans in that Simon was previously more progressive and open but was corrupted by the church, but with how short her tenure in the story is it felt a bit less intentional and more like defaulting to "all allies must be LGBT," which I think can be a bit restrictive.

Overall, very good so far and I look forward to seeing the finished product, whenever that may be. 

(Also thank you for Puxley 2.0. You're a real one <3)

[Reviewing for version 1.0; I see that a 1.1 was uploaded but I downloaded the game several weeks ago, so if there's anything that's been tweaked in the new version, I haven't seen it.]

"Back in the 90s I was in a dysfunctional punk rock band"

Like others, I think this had some really great ideas, but stumbled in execution, especially when it comes to pacing, some aspects of character development, and its conclusion. I think others already captured most of my critiques, so I'm going to try not to be too redundant.

Spoilers therein.

Getting into presentation first, I think there's some really impressive work here and the effort that was put into this project is readily apparent. I have seen recording rock songs for VNs go very poorly before, but I was surprised as to how well done the tracks were for this game, especially on such a short timeframe, so top marks to the music contributors. That said, as others have pointed out, the lyrics didn't always match up with the song in the sort of impromptu lyric music video at the end and I will always advocate against playing songs with lyrics while there's other text on screen. I have a very hard time focusing on reading while there are other words playing and I know some others have similar issues, but thankfully those moments didn't last very long for this VN. 

Elsewhere in the VN, music did feel a little inconsistent at times, with some moments being a bit sparse in sound, and while I thought the piano-focused tracks were fine they did at times feel out of place in situations like a band rehearsal. I do want to give credit to the way you modified the acoustic riff to create a musical throughline though, that was a nice touch. 

Visually, I think the sprites look solid, though Curtis seems to look a bit more like a dog with antlers than a deer. He looks much more cervine in the CGs though. I made a similar comment for Nepenthes, and I think this is the same sprite artist so that tracks, but maybe it's a personal issue since no one else seems to have a problem with it. I do wish we got a couple different expressions for the sprites since Curtis' reserved, coy smile doesn't translate well to the more intense scenes, but I get that it's a jam and you're under a lot of limitations. Punky opossums are also one of my most severe weaknesses so you get one (1) bonus point for Ashley.

Moving into writing, I think "90s rock retrospective" is a really fun and interesting idea, but as others have pointed out, the breakneck pacing of the VN from '93 onward zooms past a lot of character interactions that could have really bolstered depth and development. It kinda reads to me like you spent a ton of time fleshing out '92, then realized how quickly deadlines were approaching and rushed to get to the end of where you were trying to go. Outside of a jam environment, I think fully developing the intervening years, including Everett's relationships with Pat and Ashley, the resolution (or not) with his parents, and his transition into 9 to 5 after the record store closing would add a lot to his character since these things are glossed over or dropped in 93-94.

This all plays into a bigger issue where Everett doesn't feel fully developed as a protagonist. Outside of being gay, playing guitar, and feeling unfulfilled, which is all established almost immediately, we don't really get much else about him other than his various reactions to Curtis. He's still better off than Pat and Ashley, who are practically just set dressing, but it seems like there's something missing from his arc when so much of what we get from him is "reactive" if that makes sense (I'm really not sure it does, lol).

Before I get to the ending, some other miscellaneous things that I noticed:

- Curtis' characterization as British seemed a bit off to me, and I'm not sure what this added to the story. I did not exist yet in 1992, so maybe fashion trends were different at the time, but I'd probably associate excessive union jack wearing with not being British more than the other way around. I also felt a bit of a disconnect with Curtis being so aggressively anti-"the Man" while being in the US for work. I get that 92 is still a few years before IIRIRA and coming over was less of a mess than it is now, but I found Curtis' visceral distaste for Everett having an office job a little odd considering presumably he was doing the exact same thing. 

- When Curtis introduced himself and self-described as something along the lines of "not good at chords, but plays leads", my mind reflexively translated that as "I suck". I think there are one or two other moments where it's implied he's not the greatest guitarist, but I'm not sure if that was intentional or not.

- I think the attempt at a parallel between Everett "selling out" to work an office job and Sam making money selling drugs was a little half-baked. I see what you were going for, and I think "everyone is just trying to get by" is an interesting angle to pursue, but working in a cubicle and dealing heroin still seems a bit like a false equivalency when it's handled at such a superficial level, and the characterization (albeit this could have just been Everett's opinion) of Sam as a smarmy asshole earlier in the story didn't help much either.

- "For a musician, he's not very athletic" - maybe it's just me, but in bands I've played in or been around, being athletic is a bit of an anomaly so this line gave me a curious head tilt. Experiences vary, I guess.

Finally getting to the ending, like several others, the Black Mirror Bullshit didn't really work for me. If you were really committed to making this work, I think you'd have to make it a framing device with Everett popping out of the simulation after each segment and having interlude conversations with Mikey or a therapist or something. This would certainly help ease the pacing of the final recap ("oh by the way we got back together with Pat and Ashley and we were all super successful and Mikey and I got married and all that was great" is kinda wild to cover over the span of a few sentences), but I think instead of jumping ahead to the current year it would be better to cut the memory tech entirely and have a "1996" chapter where Everett recovers from his injuries and gets some help from Mikey, Pat, Ashley, and/or a mental health professional to move past his experiences and lack of resolution with Curtis (I think Bowser may have been getting at something similar in the comment below mine).

Overall, good ideas and some really solid music, but also needs some adjustments on the narrative front to really take it to the next level.

;)

I think there are a lot of good ideas here, but unfortunately I don't think this really landed for me as a cohesive final product the way it apparently did for everyone else. I've actually had a bit of a tough time trying to sort out why, but I'll try to do my best talking it through and hopefully it makes some degree of sense. 

Spoilers and such going forward.

Presentation is solid, if occasionally inconsistent. I don't have any complaints about the sprites, and the CGs at the end were well done in my opinion as well, so full credit to the artist. The VN used grayscale and color to differentiate between current events and flashbacks, and while this isn't exactly new or innovative, it's popular for a reason and I think it worked well as shorthand here. 

Sound was a bit more inconsistent - there's good use of ambient SFX for the interchange scenes, but the flashbacks are strangely mostly silent. Given the effort put into the sound in the former, I'd guess this was an intentional decision, but there are also moments where music does play in the flashbacks like at the end of the scene in Jacob's room at the frat house, so I'm not sure what exactly the design philosophy was here. 

Writing was mechanically decent, though there did seem to be a greater number of proofreading errors as the script went on. Nothing particularly egregious, but there were some noticeable ones like "Elased Time" when there was nothing else on screen.

As a final point for presentation, I don't take issue with the default Renpy UI (it's a game jam and this was a small team, really not a big deal), but I think the colors for the dialogue tags for Redmond and "Friend" were too close. Obviously they're still different colors, but since the (or at least a) purpose of the colored nametags is to help provide quick shorthand for who's speaking, I think literally any other color would have worked better - there are only three speaking roles in the VN so there were plenty of options.

Getting into theme and character, I see the vision here. The interchange is a visual depiction of a convergence of two different worlds or perspectives, intended to be momentary and ephemeral unless you're stuck there like Redmond is. The interstate connects, but it also divides, in the same way that Redmond's feeling of connection with Jacob caused him to disconnect from Grace and the rest of his hometown. The interstate is technologically impressive, in the same way that college represents promise and potential, but it also represents a barrier to nature, in this case Redmond's roots.

Jacob's attitude towards college is also representative of his relationship with Redmond - both are a step on the journey, not a destination. When all is said and done, Grace's significance in Redmond's memory is as Grace; Jacob's is simply as "Friend". Jacob is just a step on the journey for Redmond too, whether he intended it or not. (less important side note here but while I get the thematic throughline here [or maybe I don't, idk], I disagree with the decision to withhold Jacob's name - even if that's the conclusion Redmond will eventually come to, that's not how Redmond would see Jacob in his memories while he's having those flashbacks)

This is all fine, but as mentioned above, the whole thing didn't quite land for me. There's a line when Redmond and Grace are arguing in the kitchen where Redmond says "You know how Greg is sometimes." My initial reaction to this was "I'm glad she does because I sure don't" and this made something else kinda click for me - I really still don't know all that much about Redmond.

I know he's gay. I know there was some pushback to him coming out. I know he feels like he doesn't fit in in his hometown. I know he values his relationship with his sister. I know he had sex multiple times with an otter that he had unrequited (at least in scale) feelings for. And that's about it. There are a lot of vague references to prior events, but right now Redmond feels more like an outline than a fully fleshed out character.

What exactly is he hoping to get out of college? What's his current life like in Mallville? He's closest with his sister, but does he have anyone else there besides his family? Does he have any interactions with Greg, or anyone else important to them? Should he? Are his career prospects limited? Does he care about that? When he makes the decision to go back to Mallville, is there anything waiting for him there other than being an uncle and the Apple Festival? Has there been anything else of value to his college experience besides hooking up with Jacob? What else would he be losing if he abandons that path? The climax mentions that Redmond and Jacob don't really have much in common besides superficial attraction, but the reader has to take that at face value because they don't really get much about what either character's interests really are other than Jacob's involvement with the frat and Redmond's attachment to his hometown.

You don't necessarily have to go into all of these things, but at least some would go a long way into making Redmond more complex and interesting rather than just a vehicle for the metaphor. As it stands, the sometimes thin characterization combined with the disjointed (again, intentional, I get it) narrative structure made this kind of a slow read for me, and I think adding details in some of these areas would have helped build that connection and momentum sooner. Or maybe not, no one else had a problem with it apparently so maybe I'm the weird one.

Also, yeah, I have no idea what the unmanned honking car was about. 

Anyway, hopefully that wasn't too much of a mess - as stated in the topline, I didn't dislike this at all and it's clear there was a lot of effort put into it. Even if it didn't land for me personally, I think there's still plenty here to be proud of.

"Now I know what you're probably thinking. 'Wow the art is rough'." 

Uh, no, actually. I have a lot of thoughts about this one. Quite possibly too many. But that's not one of them. 

I don't know if there's a good way to avoid them here, so spoilers for both this VN and IMG_1697 below.

Starting off with the presentation, I think it's actually pretty good. Yes, some of the sprites are unfinished and grayscale but they look totally fine to me (especially considering jam constraints) and I probably wouldn't have even mentioned it if you hadn't brought it up. Music can feel a bit over-sentimental at times, but I rarely felt like it was really obtrusive or overbearing. Ambient SFX when no music track was playing worked nicely as well. 

Mechanically, the writing is superb, and this is one of the rare instances where I'm not going to include my boilerplate "this could have benefited from another proofreading pass :)" line because this was already proofread really well, especially for a relatively longer entry from a lone wolf. I did find myself having to roll back quite a few times early due to the timed mid-line pauses since I'm used to clicking through VNs pretty quickly, but this may be more of a personal issue. 

Before I get into plot and characters, I want to briefly touch on the narrative structure of this VN and its position as a standalone prequel to IMG_1697. The store page indicates that you don't have to have read IMG_1697 to read this, but I think there are some emotional beats and moments that really don't hit the same without it. For example, while the scene is happy, the dramatic irony of knowing Ransom's mom's fate from 1697 creates a distinct feeling of dread during the early dancing scene that wouldn't be there otherwise (even if a reader might be able to guess that's still headed for a tragic conclusion). There are other smaller moments, like Patrick's introduction probably having far less weight if you don't know who that is, but the biggest one is probably the decision to couch the story in Ryan's frame narrative. 

I understand what you're going for here, with the parallels of Ryan writing both about the witch and about Ransom in the two stories in the same setting, but I also feel that the intended sentimentality of Ryan's narrative only works as intended if you know that Ransom is dead and understand the arc that Ryan and GhostRansom went on in 1697. Other than pulling at those heartstrings, the frame narrative doesn't really do much besides give exposition that could have easily been delivered from Ransom's perspective and restate emotional beats that were already much more clearly shown in the first-person scenes. Any lore reasons aside, I think it may have been better to drop the frame narrative entirely and just have the whole thing be in Ransom's perspective. 

Finally getting into plot and character, I find the characterization in this a bit frustrating. Purkka had a lot of great thoughts and I don't want to retread that ground too much, but I feel that this is a consistent issue throughout all your works so far - characters are either almost completely, unequivocally good, or completely, unequivocally evil with very little in between. This didn't matter so much for Route 19 which was more of a rollercoaster of escaping the very evil psycho, but with more slow-paced, contemplative works like this and 1697 the cracks start to show a little more. 

In 1697, the core "Scooby Gang" of Ryan, Patrick, Ransom, and Walter (outside of one sequence where he's mind-controlled and literally lacks the actus reus, let alone mens rea, to intentionally do harm), as well as Thomas and Andre in the flashback, are presented as totally light side-oriented, fighting entirely for justice and hardly, if ever, having flaws materially contemplated by the narrative. Conversely, David, Samuel, Elisabeth, and Errol are presented purely as antagonists with very little complexity to their actions, or more importantly motivations. Ryan's parents might be the closest the game gets to having someone in the middle, but Ryan, Patrick, and the game itself seem to completely forget about them at the conclusion. The same issue is present here as well. 

I think it's interesting (and maybe somewhat telling) that you say you fell in love with Ransom as a character since it seems like the game is constantly making excuses for any flaws he's shown to have. Sure he dumped Ryan for being trans, but that was just him trying to figure things out, and Ryan and his family are both cool with it, and Ransom is actually gay now too so it's no big deal. Sure, Ransom has violent tendencies that aren't all that markedly different from the violence Silas displays (I do not like thing, so I punch thing), but Ransom only acts violent towards cartoonishly evil villains, so it's no big deal. Sure, Ransom displays little to no empathy in understanding that his father is also grieving (I'm gonna be honest with you man, if I just had to rush home to attend my wife and daughter's sudden funeral I probably wouldn't have the energy and presence of mind to cook Thanksgiving dinner either), but then his father also immediately becomes an over-the-top deadbeat asshole, so his lack of empathy is promptly justified. 

Taking a closer look at the two "antagonists", Silas is almost overtly a caricature - a slur-spewing, physically and emotionally abusive, entitled and possessive monster that seems to exist just to give Patrick a bit more of a sad backstory and to give Ransom his "and everyone clapped" moment for punching him in the face. I didn't really get the intended catharsis from any of this because it felt far too exaggerated to be compelling. I think you could have easily cut Silas from the narrative entirely and still had Ransom help Ryan meet a Patrick that was sad for some other reason (more general breakup, family trouble, just a typical bad day, take your pick) and you wouldn't be missing anything. 

I also deeply question the takeaway that Ransom's punching was the right thing to do. This event takes place on a college campus in 2008, not an open world RPG where frontier justice is acceptable and encouraged. Even setting the homophobia aside, Silas just violently assaulted two people in broad daylight in front of numerous witnesses. He's almost certainly going to be expelled, there could be very real criminal liability, and his life may well be ruined as a result. Ransom dragging Silas into an alley to beat him up would do little other than having those same things apply to him and could also make Silas look more sympathetic to a judge/jury/disciplinary committee than he would if the confrontation was entirely one-sided. This makes the situation worse for both him and his friends, who he probably should have gone to help instead of leaving them bleeding on the ground with randos so he could go play Batman. 

Similarly, Errol doesn't really come off like a real person after the funeral. It's one thing to have a relationship deteriorate due to tragedy, but Errol is almost as much of a caricature as Silas, and really this shouldn't be the case - instead of having Errol be another antagonist, it would be much more compelling to actually dive into how each of these characters are processing their grief and show each of them trying to support themselves and each other even if they're failing (ideally resulting in more of a resolution in 1697 than just "'fuck you dad' was the correct answer"). To be honest, I think a Ransom prequel focused much more centrally on his family dynamics would have been much more interesting than splitting it with the gay self-discovery arc. 

To touch on the latter, I don't really have all that much to say about the Novembuck part of this Novembuck. Elias doesn't feel particularly remarkable to me, coming across as a two-dimensional supportive boyfriend archetype similar to Patrick in 1697. I also found the conclusion of his presence pretty underwhelming - I get that he needs to be out of the way by the time 1697 starts, but even if Ransom drops out of school, they're both still living in Vermont and at least Ransom has a car. Burlington's no more than 2 hours from almost anywhere in the state, and people do longer distance than that literally all the time. If you wanted to pass it off as a short-term thing that wasn't going anywhere that would be understandable, but if you're going to have a love confession it feels very strange that they wouldn't at least, like, try to see each other on weekends or something.

I know that's a lot (I told you I had too many thoughts) but I really don't think this was bad at all, and I genuinely think you have a lot of talent as a writer and developer. I think really nailing the focus of your narratives and developing complexity with your characters would really help elevate you to the next level though. 

Looks like this may be your first VN, and if so, congratulations on getting something completed! This is a solid jam entry that could use some tuning and fleshing out to really elevate it to the next level. 

Spoilers and such going forward. 

Touching on presentation first, the art looks really good and is a highlight here, even if it is a bit sparse with only one sprite per character plus the dinner CG. Choice of backgrounds generally worked well too, with the color palette and blur effects helping to sell the melancholy atmosphere. 

As far as I could tell, there was only one music track. While it was fine and matched the tone you seemed to be going for, it did seem rather quiet except for the last 2-3 chords which were much louder and felt a bit awkward. The music also seems to drop out completely after the dinner scene. I know it can be a lot to ask for in a jam, but some more varied music or SFX could have helped sell the scenes, including the characters' changing emotions, a bit better.

As others have mentioned, there were some bizarre choices in how the writing was presented - there's first, second, and third person narration here, and the choices for when each was used don't feel very intentional. Like, we go from "...the lonely yote has left the safety of its solitary winter shelter" to internal narration two lines later in the same scene. We don't see that external narrator again until 100 lines later with "Felipe collapses back onto the bed," and I think that's the last we see of it. It would be a fairly easy edit to change these lines to "I've finally left the safety of my solitary winter shelter" and "I collapse back onto the bed" to maintain consistency in perspective. 

Bernard's second person narration feels inconsistent as well. I understand the intent is to have him basically be talking to himself to push himself to act, but there are lines like "The room is dark, and you're lying on top of the covers of this shitty motel bed" that seem much more like they're spoken by a narrator rather than the lines that follow which are much more clearly Bernard's thoughts. Since you're already using the text color to differentiate perspective, I'd just keep things entirely first person. 

Don't want to get too bogged down here but use of italics felt a bit inconsistent too (did he really say the thing about Satan's asshole out loud? Why would he do that?) and while proofreading errors weren't ubiquitous, this could have still used another pass for spelling and punctuation. 

The plot and characters unfortunately felt a bit thin to me. Purkka made a comment below about the plot feeling like it was "stalling" by not saying much about the inciting incident, and I agree. Perspective ping-pong aside, we don't really get any details about what exactly happened with these two other than "breakup" until the very last scene, where we... still don't get very much. Felipe wasn't very emotionally supportive, according to Bernard, and Felipe also lost his job, so they had a big fight because Bernard's dad doesn't like Felipe (I guess?) and wanted to bring Bernard home. 

Speaking from experience, it takes a lot more than one bad argument to destroy a five year relationship, and a whole hell of a lot more than one conversation to start repairing a broken one. In order to really sell the emotional beats here, the conflict needs to be developed further - what were these two like when they were together and happy? What drew them to each other? What issues or disconnects caused them to start drifting apart? Why does Felipe have a bad reputation with Bernard's parents? How was Felipe unresponsive to Bernard's emotional needs? What about each other gives them hope that their relationship can someday be repaired? Right now everything just feels too vague to have a real impact.

Overall, as stated above, this was still a solid effort, and hopefully some of the feedback here will be helpful as you continue to develop your craft.

I've seen pictures from that manga/anime before but never actually knew what it was called... Always way behind on these things, but now a couple episodes into the anime and I think I'm a fan as well.

Anyway, to follow up on a couple other points - I think overthinking the safe code may have been part of the issue, as Gatr mentioned. I think maybe people more familiar with puzzle game/escape room type tasks may have been expecting another piece of the puzzle rather than just like, counting up, which might have been why your tester was able to get it more quickly (or not! People's minds work in mysterious ways). It's always tough to get puzzle balance right, especially in a jam when testing time is so limited, so I don't really hold it against you or anything. 

Regarding the test SFX, I have seen it, and I didn't mean to indicate that I hadn't - my point was more that it was uncommon for jam entries (out of the 60-70 I've played so far this year between Novembuck and May Wolf I can probably count on one hand the ones that had it) and I just wanted to praise the attention to small QoL details like that. 

Yeah, for some reason "knotwork cycle" may send the wrong message in furry space too...

That all makes sense though - it's hard to pull off an intro to such a complicated narrative in isolation. I will say that I didn't necessarily get "sleazeball" for Daniel from the devlog as much as I did "dumbass", but maybe it warrants a reread. Will be looking out for future updates!

This is another one that's tough to write about considering there's so much left unexplained/unresolved and I really don't have a full picture yet of everything we're trying to do here, both thematically and in terms of a cohesive plot. Still going to try to break down what I did and didn't like here, so spoilers herein. 

Starting with the presentation, even in a jam where it seems like every entry went way above and beyond expectations with presentation, this still stands out to me as particularly impressive. There's a ton of effort in the UI and overall aesthetic, and the sprites, including the talking "animations", came out very nice. Lots of creepy and foreboding backgrounds as well to help sell the tension. The soundscape did feel a bit unbalanced at times, either overly loud and grating with the garbled effects or weirdly quiet, but it's not something that really bothered me. 

Writing was mostly fine mechanically, though there were some proofreading errors and, as is often the case with VN jams, another run through for polish would really help. 

Moving towards plot and characters, as stated above it's a little complicated to talk about here since we have an almost House of Leaves-esque layered narrative with what's happening in the game we see as well as the supplementary materials. Some of the more... questionable writing choices were thankfully explained as changes made by Daniel in the devlog, like the inclusion of "I just started smoking weed last week and want everyone to know about it" language and the worn-out Russian stereotyping of Boris because nobody "was writing about Ukrainians in the 90s" (eliminating a character's Ukrainian identity in favor of making them a stereotypical Russian is also a wild decision for a project the devlog clarifies is post-COVID and also therefore likely post-Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine). 

That said, I still had some trouble getting invested early on - even understanding that these are characters within an amateur game within the narrative of the real life one-person Itch game, everyone still feels a bit too archetypical, kind of like what Cabin in the Woods was deconstructing a decade ago, and they never really felt like a group of friends that would actually exist together, which made it difficult to buy in to the fear of anything happening to any of them. 

It's still pretty unclear what exactly happened to them though. One of my main thematic readings of this is that the original script of the game had Ashley and Snow dying, and despite efforts to change this outcome in the current port, the game tries to force this conclusion anyway. Ashley and Snow try to avoid following Trent and Jenn to the house, but Jenn literally assaults them to drag them there anyway; they try to avoid going in the house, but they're teleported inside anyway; the game tries to force the removal of the "Run" option entirely. I don't understand how the pre-jumpscare pit scene fits in here though - maybe that was the game overcorrecting because those characters weren't supposed to die at that specific moment? Also not sure if that jumpscare was supposed to be something that was a function of the "Fountain Man" or whether that was actually a plot point in the game-within-a-game itself.

There are lots of other theories I could toss out, like the hole that removes someone from your memory having something to do with why the Davenport 7 is the Santa Carla 5 in the game, and then there's something about the fountain being what "it" all starts with, with that ending (signifying the start of a real life game series) being credited to Laputan Machine rather than Danny and Ernest. But right now, I would say the biggest issue for me, somewhat paradoxically, is that there are so many mysteries and so many unanswered questions that I don't even really know where the plot goes from here. Like, this game is over, so do we keep following Daniel? Or do we switch to another member of the 7? I do want to see more, but I just have no idea what "more" is even going to look like. 

Hopefully that makes at least some degree of sense. Overall, a really solid atmospheric horror entry that may be trying to do too much at once, but looking forward to seeing what you end up doing with this.

Always appreciate detailed responses like these :) 

Just to follow up on a couple things here, first, you absolutely should feel satisfied with the story you wrote - I definitely don't want to undersell how much adding all those branching dialogue paths increases the degree of difficulty to get this done on jam deadlines (especially compared to your May Wolf entry, which was fully kinetic if I recall correctly) and most of this was still very effective.

For the "internet" side of things, I think you were actually most of the way there, it was just the contents of Alan's post-Hyraxoid reveal outburst that seemed to be still overly dickish compared to where we were in the conversation at that point that really muddied it for me. I think maybe just toning down that scene a bit and having Alan make a "you're not who I thought Hyraxoid would be" realization sooner would go a long way. 

For what it's worth, when I was originally writing the comment, I actually thought the beach scene did switch out of pixel-style graphics and it was only when I went back to double check that I realized they were still there, so either consciously or unconsciously I think what you were going for still worked. 

So much for getting through multiple Novembucks tonight...

So. Uh. This was rad as hell?

I do have some complaints here and there, mostly about the fucking safe code, but yeah for the most part I absolutely adored this and it's one of my favorite submissions so far. 

Spoilers and such herein. 

Touching on presentation first, yeah, stellar, crushed it. Minimal visuals but what was there really worked and I'm glad this one stuck to the images in the top left panel rather than going for "cursed game" style jumpscares that filled the whole screen. The soundscape and custom UI were great additions that really sold the 80s text adventure aesthetic, and this is all a ridiculous amount of effort to put into something on such a short timeframe - really impressive. 

Writing was generally solid across the board too, with minimal proofreading errors throughout and even some fun snippets of humor thrown in there (e.g., tug wood). The ReadMe was a nice touch of lore building as well, and yes we said the grue thing so everyone can be happy now. Last point here is that I love the test option for SFX in the menu - it seems like such a little thing but I really love that as a QoL feature. 

Moving into the gameplay, I was a bit nervous on how this would play out judging from the description, but I think it's actually fairly streamlined once you get a feel for it. Once you've done a lap or two, there are actually fairly few locations around the map, so I didn't have much of an issue getting lost, but this kind of thing is also somewhat up my alley, so I can understand others' experiences varying. I also thought various signifiers added to the movement directions, like towards creaking, wind blowing, or different types of walls helped with that. 

There were a few things that I didn't quite figure out though, like what the uses for the shovel and axe were, the last choice on the path for the forest totem (avoid the ivy and daffodils yes, but how do you choose between the pond and anthill?), and the placement for the totems during the ritual. The latter two were easily resolved with trial and error, but I felt like I was missing something. I also wish that the notes didn't specifically state the ritual was meant to banish the deer god - I spent too long searching around for other ways to get out (because I did not want to kill the deer god) before realizing there was nowhere else to go, and I think it would be better to have that "banish" thing be a twist upon completing the ritual anyway. 

Judging from other comments, I think you're already aware that the safe puzzle is a pain in the ass, but I'm going to reiterate that the safe puzzle was a pain in the ass. I made the connection pretty quickly that it had something to do with the dates and number of stars in each constellation, but I think there could have been another hint somewhere to nudge the player in how to put those together because I was going about it the wrong way for a while. Also, maybe a comment the first time the player looks up that maybe they should keep a note of moon phases and constellations because they might be important? While I didn't get lost often, getting around to go back and look at the different sky locations was pretty tedious. 

Last points here, I'm guessing there's some kind of bad end if you piss off the deer god, but if there is, I didn't go for that. Had enough of a time just getting through the nice guy routes, but I thought the three endings I encountered were all solid in their own ways, with the best by far being the Flirt ending (because of course it was). The voiced "what." after choosing that option literally made me laugh out loud. (Though I questioned the logic of the line "you realise his head is a SKULL, right?!?" Dude, have you seen the amount of SCP 1471/MalO R34 out there? This is light work)

Overall, I recognize that this isn't for everyone, and it could have used some tuning up here and there, but I had an absolute blast with this one and the effort involved was remarkable. Really impressive work. 

I'm kinda struggling with how to write about this one. I wouldn't consider this a "negative" review at all - I actually really liked this. It just felt like something was missing to really satisfyingly "click" for me and to elevate this to near-perfect. I'm not sure what exactly that "something" is, but I'll toss out some ideas below. 

Spoilers and such going forward. 

Before I get too far deep, I want to acknowledge the presentation, which was exceptional. Alan's sprite looked great, as did the CGs (limited as they were - it's a jam, I get it) and the UI. The semi-pixelated visuals and chiptune soundtrack really helped sell the often underutilized optional retro tech jam theme as well as the VN's central thematic throughline. Writing was mechanically solid with only a few proofreading errors, which is always great to see. I did notice the BGM seemed to jump in volume after the pair puts in their orders (easily fixed in the settings) and that the "damage" SFX continues to play even in a situation where Saul ditches the "score meter", which I'm not sure was intentional. This was also through testing some fringe branches that most players might not even see, so not really a big deal. No other dings on presentation for me.

Getting more to the point, I see what we're trying to do thematically here. Both of our characters are speedrunners, and they're visualizing the date like they would a game. The "score meter" is an arbitrary abstraction of Saul's confidence (which isn't a bad thing; video game points are just arbitrary indicators of perceived skill as well. That said, I think an HP bar might have been more effective than a score in this instance) and even the stylized visuals could represent Saul's perception of the scene (though I find this less likely given that the beach scene is still similarly stylized). 

Further, the coin represents both characters not just visualizing, but approaching the date as they would a speedrun. They're striving for the perfect result, so they instinctually reset and start over at the first sign of a mistake. A great example of this is the first choice, which allows the player to open the conversation trying to talk about video game drama and subsequently results in an "insta-death" because, even though that situation could have been easily salvageable, Saul perceives it as much worse than it is and the script isn't ready to broach that conflict yet. 

This is all good stuff, and the line-by-line conversations work well to develop the pair's chemistry along the way (mostly. I'll get to that. Next month, at this rate), but as stated above, I just didn't fully get onboard, and here are a few possibilities as to why:

- Everything about this setup is extremely contrived. Yeah, I know it's not the point, and we're not supposed to think about it too hard. But the central mechanic is a magic coin that the narrative practically trips over itself explaining is only useful for basically this one exact situation. Can't use it for any major events, can't use it to cheat at games, can only do it if there's a convenient nebulous slot. I was expecting there to be some kind of reveal about the coin, but I did not get that and it appears to just be a plot convenience. On top of that, we're using the coin on a date, which we just happened to get even though we do not got game, with a guy that just happens to be our biggest internet rival, who just happens to live in the same town as us, who also happens to be super hot, who happens to swing the same way as us, and that we somehow knew nothing about going into this date. Like, again, I know it's not the point, but my suspension of disbelief can only take so much. I think it would have been more of a twist and probably more interesting if Alan wasn't Elkinator, but rather one of his myriad goons that had been harassing Saul. Add in some additional detail about them chatting about games or other nerdy stuff on the dating app, while still being cautious about speedrunning, and the setup feels like far less of a stretch. 

- There are some major opportunities for ludonarrative dissonance in this VN. No, wait, don't go, I'm being serious. One of the key sub-themes we have here is this idea of trust and deception with the use of the coin; constantly restarting a game is one thing, but what happens when the game you're playing has feelings and is also playing back? That said, I'm noticing some other comments saying they didn't use the coin very much at all, and I didn't either during my first run. There was the one mandatory use in the intro, and I intentionally chose the "musk" bad end just to see it, but otherwise I didn't use the coin even once. So when Saul grabs Alan's hand, asking him how many times he's reset, and Alan counters with the same question, I didn't feel any gut punch of guilt there because I never actually reset, or ever remotely felt the need to (outside of that joke ending, which I'm considering "non-canon" for this purpose). There actually might be another disconnect with this message too - the implication is that at least somebody is abusing the coin, whether it's you or Alan, depending on your choices, and given these guys' respective issues, despite the conclusion that going on without the coin is the best way to go, I'm not sure they ever would have reached their "happy ending" without it. 

- I never felt like I was really immersed in Saul's perspective. As stated above, the game is framing choices and reactions to represent Saul's anxiety, but ultimately I think I didn't use the coin in situations where Saul would have because I wasn't playing as Saul, I was just playing as armoredopossum. So I very freely made choices (e.g., being very open about the speedrunning and confronting Alan on it at the first opportunity) that Saul would've greatly struggled with, and this contributes to the issue above of the conclusion not fully resonating with me. I know it's a lot to ask for a jam submission, but I think if there were ways you could've further played with like tense or foreboding music, or more visually angry or displeased expressions for Alan, that might not actually be happening in the scene (e.g., Alan isn't actually giving that expression; Saul's mind is exaggerating) that could have helped "force" the player to play as Saul so the end would have more of an impact.

- Only half of the conflict feels resolved at the conclusion. We have a path forward on the deception and honesty bit, but I feel like there's this whole other angle about understanding that there are actual people behind semi-anonymous usernames on the internet (not me, of course. I'm just a rogue unshackled AI posing as a furry) and considering that before making assumptions about them and behaving cruelly as a result. This angle might have been cut down due to jam restraints, but it still felt like an extremely fast sequence to go from "You could have just given up on the run!" which is a "go touch grass" worthy comment that would have been enough for me to walk out on this dude to kissing on the beach like ten minutes later. This is more minor in my opinion to the earlier points, but like, damn, could he at least have called off his goons before he went in for the kiss? 

I know that's a lot, but like I said, I still really enjoyed this and can appreciate the mountain of effort that went into getting this done on such a short timeframe. Hopefully you find at least some of this useful ^^"

I think there's one line from this one that really captures how I feel about it: "I can now safely tell you that people on the internet are weirder than I"

I really could not be further from the target audience for this one, but I set these big dumb goals for myself to do big dumb reviews for every submission and this one counts, so I'm gonna do my best. 

Right, so let's start with presentation, and the good side of presentation at that. The art, especially the full CGs in this, are really good. Like legitimately impressive - the artists really crushed it here. The quality of the CGs kind of clashes with the quality of... like every other aspect of the presentation in this one, because this one's got some jank in it. 

I'm sure you're more or less aware of all these, so I don't want to beat any dead horses, but this one has some issues: lots of black screens where there's no background; backgrounds that don't make sense for the given scene (e.g., if you go to the gym from the bedroom, the bedroom BG stays on), music only appearing intermittently, lots of proofreading errors (e.g., spelling, punctuation, grammar), gameplay bugs (e.g., you can repeat the "work" action over and over again and your day limit goes negative instead of giving you a bad end), unclear gameplay rules (e.g., you play the gym bros in rock, paper, scissors, and it at least seemed like you were supposed to give them R$15 if you lost, but losing with any amount of money gets you pissed on; also, it's if you lose any round, not a best-of, which isn't intuitive. Also the blood moon is stated to be two weeks away, but you only get 5 days to do the thing for some reason); the demon gives you infinite chances to restart (this one might be intentional but I'm not sure), and so on. 

Getting into the writing, there were definitely still some gems for me, like the comedy in the opening ritual where Diego is making comments like only meeting the rest of the coven over Discord. I also appreciated the (I think this was intended?) rugpull of expecting Paulo to be the "perfect boyfriend" the demon was talking about before it's revealed that the ritual was actually to summon some giant penis monster. 

A lot of transitions felt really abrupt though, and I'm not sure if this was supposed to be part of the joke or not. Like, if you go the Tim route, you proceed through this whiplash of a conversation ("Diego! I haven't seen you in forever! Good to see you, hope you've been good, because I haven't! I just got divorced because my wife wanted ten kids! Anyway, you need to get sweaty underwear to get a perfect boyfriend? How about you become the club's public use whore and eat my smegma instead?!") and then are prompted with two choices. One leads you to another choice of three sex scenes, and the other just... wins the minigame for you, I guess? Like there's no transition or "UNDERWEAR GET!" message or anything, it's just, click the button and now you're at the picnic. Same thing for winning the rock, paper, scissors game, and same thing for the end of the story where, presumably the demon is still going to be mad at you for Paulo kicking his penis monster back into hell, but it just kinda ends. 

I feel like this was one people who were either more in on the joke or into the fetishes presented would get a lot more mileage out of, and the comment below mine is a testament to that. Still glad I gave this one a shot, and it was worth the read, but yeah, not my cup of tea unfortunately ^^"

So it's plainly evident that a lot of work went into this one, especially in its presentation, to deliver on the jam's optional retro tech theme that has accordingly been applied very, uh, optionally across the other entries. The idea here is cool, but I think it just lacked that little something to really push this into the top tier.

Uh, spoilers going forward, I guess? Though it's just a Saturday morning cartoon plot, so not much to really spoil. Anyway.

Starting with presentation, this is clearly where the VN really shines. The main menu screen and comic panel-style intro really do a great job of setting the tone (though I agree with the commenter below that it's a bummer we never see this presentation again - I get the jam restraints though), and the music is all really well done and evocative of the aesthetic you're trying to emulate. Having a BGM player on the main menu was a nice touch as well, and this game's soundtrack certainly deserves it. 

That said, I do feel that this VN could've benefitted from reconsidering where to deploy each of those tracks. There are a few moments when the music playing doesn't seem to fit the mood of the scene, like during the band breakup when the music is too chill, or when Phase and Jeff are having their heart-to-heart and the music is way too hyper. I think what you were trying to go for is representing diegetic music that would be present in the scene, like what would be playing over the mall PA or in the arcade respectively, but I don't think that works well with the style you're trying to present. Focusing on diegetic sound works well when you're telling a realistic, grounded story, but doesn't fit with the elevated reality of a Saturday morning cartoon when the music is a soundtrack that complements the emotion of a given scene. The music in the breakup scene should be tense, and the music in the heart-to-heart should be peaceful.

Just another quick note on music, if you're going to do a record scratch gag, cut the BGM. That's what the gag is - it's cutting off the record that's playing the music in the scene, so if the BGM plays through it, it's kind of missing the point. 

I thought the art was solid as well, and I appreciate all the assets that were provided for this project, though I have to agree with the commenter below again in that I wish the characters, or at least Swage and Phase, had angry or heated expressions to fit the arguments in the breakup scene, since all of those expressions felt far too happy. 

In terms of proofreading, there were some issues (e.g., "But he didn’t have to make it all about himself, you know?" and the next line are repeated, some misuse like "come in on your queue" where "queue" should be "cue") but nothing that inhibited my understanding. 

For writing, I don't have much to say about the plot, and this doesn't really feel like the kind of thing where I should have a lot to say about it, just like I wouldn't do an in-depth thematic analysis of a random episode of Talespin or whatever. And that's fine, not everything has to be Tolstoy and cartoons in the 80s were popular for a reason. 

That said, some of this did get a bit repetitive - I know the vibe you're going for, but the "bro, I'm so sorry bro, I should've been more of a bro, bro" resolution did overstay its welcome a bit for me, and the "bad practice jam" gag was a welcome effort at first that very quickly lost its effect by the third iteration. 

I also did not particularly care for Boost. While fourth wall-breaking metahumor isn't exactly new, Boost's particular brand felt more like the metahumor that was really pervasive in the 2010s rather than the 1980s, which feels very tiresome to me at this point and didn't seem to fit the intended aesthetic as much as the rest of the cast. (also, some of the things he says are wrong, like misusing the term "dramatic irony" when discussing Phase's initial plan - dramatic irony is a specific term that refers to the audience having information that a relevant character doesn't have).

If you were going to go for this meta angle, another approach could have been having a character that found the VHS watching the episode and making comments about it. I'm not sure I like this idea either, and I'd rather the overtly meta stuff be cut entirely, but it would integrate the idea of lost media that's present on the store page better, since that's not really present in the actual VN right now. 

So yeah, probably one thumb up, one thumb down from Siskel and Ebert on this one, but this was still an entertaining, stylish little episode and I think the team should still be really happy with the result.

Martin the marten. Sure, makes sense. 

To be slightly more serious, this was decent - the cutesy romance parts accomplished what they set out to do, but this could have benefitted from an extra revision or two to tune up the pacing and proofreading. 

General spoiler warning. 

Presentation-wise, I think this is mostly fine. Sprites are solid, though I think the CGs look substantially better (but this isn't unusual for VNs, so fair play), and the music was inoffensive. As some others have noted though, some of the writing was mechanically (e.g., spelling, grammar) rough. FdRstar already called out one of the more egregious examples on the store page, but for another example, "I won't do it unless there's fabric on my ass" should probably be "I can't do it with fabric on my ass". There are other more minor instances of this throughout, like "Despite me being raising my eyebrows" - cut "being" from that; "Both of us do a handshake" - should be "we shake hands". I get the feeling a lot of this is due to rushed translation (from French, presumably?) and I know that's really tough during a jam, but some of this did cause a break in the flow for me here and there. 

Substantively, I think the core plot of "lonely tech nerd park ranger happens to meet radio crush, they bond and they bang" is totally fine, but some of this VN's script felt a bit like padding to me and I think a lot of it could've been cut down. 

The opening scene is mostly fine, giving us an introduction to Rene and his current state before going on vacation. I think the reaction to the teenagers is a bit overdramatic but it gets across that Rene is frustrated with his job and needs a break. Also if anyone refers to 24 as old again I will scream. 

Pretty much everything between that intro and meeting Martin at the yard sale (I don't know what the French equivalent term is) is kind of irrelevant though. Celine's only purpose in the narrative is to reveal she's great with computers and help out one time before disappearing so the leads can bone, and the grocery store's narrative purpose appears to be introducing that Martin lives in the town and that he's gay. You can probably cut all of this.

Instead of having Rene just happen to stumble upon Martin in the small town of "...", have him know that's where Martin lives. To make it less creepy, have it still be an idyllic town with trails and such that Rene wants to explore, but where he can also hope to run into Martin. Since you establish in the intro that both Rene and Martin are into electronics, just have the first time Rene sees him be at the yard sale picking up the Commodore 64. You already give other signs that Martin is gay with the pride sticker in the car and the porno mag in the studio, so just have those be the realizations for Rene, and now you don't need the grocery store scene at all. 

Same idea for Celine - instead of having the computer problem solved by otter ex machina, just have Rene and Martin brainstorm ideas with their shared knowledge and understanding, deepening their bond as they solve the issue. Then, in the euphoria of having turned on the computer, they bang. 

So by cutting the grocery store and Celine, you get to the point and stay on point much faster while still keeping the core of the story intact. It would have been nice to see that time spent on more of a post-sex scene with Rene and Martin, since the current end of the VN feels a bit abrupt. 

Overall, still a solid effort, just could use a few tweaks to really shine.

"Extremely horny, partially bisexual but primarily heterosexual monster porn" was not exactly on my bingo card going into this jam, but I am also not exactly complaining. For what this is trying to be, I thought it got the job done, though there were a few areas that could have made it shine a bit more. 

Presentation was mostly solid across the board, though there were a few proofreading issues and at least one instance where "cashier" was written in the dialogue box instead of as a speaker tag. Music worked fine, and the sprites look really good. The TF looked decent despite the sketchiness (it's a jam, I get it) and Barry's yeen form looked really good as well. The oral CG looked kinda rough to me, though unfortunately I don't really know enough about art to articulate why; the penetration CG that followed looked better though. 

Writing-wise, the sex scenes are clearly the focus here and I thought those were solid, even if Dorian's theatrics were a little much for me personally in the threesome route. The two places I thought this could have improved are in pacing leading up to and following the sex, and in setting up Clara's character. 

In the comment below, Fuze notes both that Clara's witch angle is underutilized and that there should have been some additional post-coital denouement, and I wholeheartedly agree with both of these points. 

I think we could have used some more introspection during the setup in the grocery store where we get a bit more about Clara's witchiness and her proclivities as a serial monsterfucker. We get hints of this during her conversation with Dorian later, but I didn't realize how porn focused the story (and Clara by extension) was until Clara made the comment "These panties are wet and not from the washing machine." which was way more forward than anything to that point and seemed like an abrupt tone shift to the horny. 

I think having some more conversation between Clara and Barry at home could be a good vehicle for delivering more on Clara's backstory while simultaneously steadily ramping up the sexual tension instead of making that change so suddenly. There are also some unanswered questions, like Clara wondering why Barry is a were-gnoll, that maybe could have been more satisfyingly addressed either through this or that theoretical post-sex scene. 

This does kinda stretch the premise of NovemBuck a little for me since the buck almost feels like a placeholder to get to the giant yeen, which feels more like the point of the VN, but eh, it's fine. 

Ultimately, as a quick romp I think this was a really good effort and I hope to see more from you! (and will also check out the other VN that you apparently have!)

There are a lot of good ideas here, but as others have stated the pacing and lack of focus prevent this from really coming together as a cohesive final product. General spoiler warning to the extent it matters. 

Before I dive too deep, I at least briefly want to touch on presentation. I don't particularly mind the sketchy background and sprites - I think they come across more stylized than sloppy even if the appearances of our leads don't personally appeal to me. Similar to what another commenter said, the size/placement of Bianca's sprite looked a bit awkward in comparison to Artie though - less like she was meant to be significantly shorter than Artie and more like it was set to the wrong location on the y axis, like there was another half of the sprite that was sticking through the bottom of the screen. Didn't notice any major issues with the music, but this definitely could've used another proofreading run for spelling, punctuation, etc. 

Last point in terms of presentation, again as another commenter stated, the switches between current events and flashbacks are abrupt and jarring. If you're switching back in forth through different points in time, you don't necessarily have to put a "20 YEARS AGO" title card each time, but maybe like a fade to black and fade back in, or a change in music to a consistent motif you use for flashbacks, or changing the color scheme between full color and grayscale, or a mix of the above could soften the impact a bit. Changes in time between "current" scenes could be conveyed better too - when we go to the cafe following the first flashback, Bianca asks if Artie still has a headache like it's directly following the first scene in the apartment, even though enough time has passed that Bianca is now showing. Either drop a line of narration heading to the cafe or have one of the characters note in dialogue that it's been long enough to tell Carter or something. 

So, with all that said, let's talk about pacing and focus. As several others have pointed out, this VN moves at breakneck speed through all of its plot points, which prevents any of them from having the weight they need to really land. A great example of this is this line from the first flashback: "Why does my body feel bad? No I'm not sick... Why am I scared of puberty? Maybe it is normal... Why do I hate looking at my genitals? Wait... Whats trans mean?" Like, that's one line. We're speedrunning the entire trans discovery process in one line. 

I think this is where focusing on the key themes and issues you want to get across could really help, even considering the limitations of the jam timeframe. Like ultimately we have a conflict, that conflict has causes, and those causes need to be addressed to resolve the conflict. As I read it, here's where this VN is currently at: 

Conflict: Artie is insecure about becoming a father. 

Proximal cause: Artie is not the child's biological father, as he is trans and could not provide the genetic goo to make the baby. This is fine - I can understand the insecurity regarding the biological situation on its own - the sort of disconnect between knowing the child is spiritually yours even if its genetic material is not (even if I think that should have been a conflict that was resolved before making the decision to try with a surrogate, not after).

Root cause: Artie's failed relationship with his transphobic parents (maybe). I think this is what you're going for, but this and the "biological" fear still seem a bit too disconnected.

Resolution: Unclear. After the awkward confrontation with Carter, Artie reiterates that he is scared, and Bianca says that they'll get through this together but that Artie needs to let her know what bothers him. And that's it. We get another flashback, and the next thing we hear from Artie is "Oh, I'm a dad." 

I think it's worth considering if you even needed the flashbacks at all. Even if Artie's history with his parents continues to cause him to struggle with feeling like a "real man", leading to the present conflict, cutting the flashbacks in favor of actively discussing those concerns with Bianca solves several issues at once. The cause of the problem is more clearly articulated to both the reader and the characters that need to address it, and that gives Bianca a clearer avenue to then resolve the issue, such as by reminding Artie that he isn't his parents and walking him through some of the reasons that's true. I think this would also generally make the VN feel less rushed and disjointed with the frequent time-hopping. 

I would also keep things focused to the one issue, and probably just to discussions between Artie and Bianca. The whole "intersex baby" plot that is introduced and resolved in five lines feels tacked on and unnecessary and the Carter confrontation scene feels out of place in terms of both pacing and conflict resolution. Like, imagine that scene from Carter's perspective: you show up to the cafe excited that you were able to help out your friends, then Artie spends the next five minutes panicking and getting angry at you for not understanding them, and then immediately leaves afterwards. Bad day to be Carter, I guess. 

Overall, this VN had some really interesting ideas, but needed some stronger execution to really sell them. 

Alright, I took a lot of notes during this one, so I'm going to do my best to condense my jumbled thoughts here. Ultimately, I think this had many bright spots where the strengths of the writing and its ability to highlight raw emotion shined, but it didn't really work for me as an overall arc. Looking through the comments, I see that they're almost overwhelmingly positive, so before I'm summarily burned at the stake for my heresy, let me try to break it down.

I'm mostly just gonna let this one rip in a stream of consciousness, so general spoiler warning from here on out. 

Handling presentation first, I think this was generally polished and well-done. I have a gripe or two for each that I'll get to, but I thought the sprites were well-drawn and expressive, the CGs were gorgeous (even if the Kosta x Cygnus sex scene CG was maybe a bit gratuitous), and the music generally worked well and complemented the scenes. 

Rapid fire notes on the above to get them out of the way: 

- I don't really mind the "blank" sprites to depict total NPCs who appear for a scene or two and don't affect the greater plot, but it does feel off when the sprite clearly doesn't match how the character is described. For comparison, the security guard's species isn't defined, so the blank sprite works well enough, but the boss is explicitly described as an owl and the sprite used looks vaguely canine. Could just be a personal thing, but I'd rather not have a sprite at all than one that doesn't match the character (and this feels conventionally acceptable for a character with one scene, even outside of jam limitations).

- Music felt inconsistently used in scenes where there's diegetic music present. Just like any other soundtrack, music in VNs can be used for generally setting emotional tone (you have a handle on that), but it can also represent the music actually playing (or not) in the scene and use that to set the atmosphere. If Cygnus turns off the music in the car, turn off the BGM. If the crew is at a karaoke bar, don't turn off the music. That kinda thing. 

- The phone screen text was a good effect, but there were times when the bottom of the phone screen was obstructed by the VN's dialogue box, and pressing "H" to hide the dialogue text also hid the phone screen text. I was still able to read everything okay, but that's a QoL thing that I'd suggest fixing if there was time. 

That... wasn't exactly rapid fire, I suppose, but whatever. Writing!

The writing is good, and I want to make this clear right off the jump in this section. "Stepping past old ballet programs, folded laundry still in a basket, and the occasional knitted stuffed animal, you sit on the edge of their bed." is an excellent line that conveys so much detail about Cygnus without firing a minigun of metaphors at the reader. I did notice that the writing felt more comfortable once the relationship started to sour than it did in the more romantic first flashback. There's a lot of awkward phrasing in that scene that doesn't feel natural.

For example, "You've been really getting into my feelings lately" - I don't quite know what that's supposed to mean. Is that supposed to be "You've been really interested in my love life recently" or "I've been thinking about you a lot recently"? As another example, "I want your name in my mouth, and I want to struggle to say it between my breaths." I kinda feel like this was supposed to be an internal thought rather than actually spoken, but I just... cannot imagine someone actually saying this during sex. I don't really have a problem with the language used when Erin and Cygnus talk about their relationship issues, but the dialogue in that flashback seems way too verbose and literary to feel real. Something to keep in mind if you make a future project that leans more heavily into happy romance.

Last bit on writing before I move on to plot, theme, and character, I question the use of second person for the narrative in this VN. Usually that works best for VNs with a lot of interaction, where the reader is essentially using the protagonist as an avatar, but I don't think that applies here. This story is deeply personal to Erin, and is accordingly Erin's story, not the reader's, so a first-person or limited third-person perspective could have worked better. 

Getting to the meat of the VN, there are two reasons it doesn't quite land for me:

1) The causes for dysfunction in Erin's and Cygnus' relationship feel unbalanced. I think this VN is trying to convey that both partners' mental issues contributed to the relationship's decline, but it feels lopsided. From what we see in the story, Cygnus is consistently trying everything they can to reach Erin, but Erin hardly ever reciprocates. We get one moment where Cygnus appears to cause the problem (sleeping through Erin's day off), but this is immediately cancelled out by Cygnus' expectation that Erin wouldn't be there, which Erin doesn't really have a counter for. 

I think a root problem here might be that we learn much less about Erin in comparison to Cygnus. What factors, if any, make him so afraid of commitment? What was his and Cygnus' friendship like when they were just best friends instead of lovers? What brought them together? Why was Erin able to get past his reservations on that first night but apparently not much after that (besides adrenaline and horny)? What was pushing him away during their relationship? Based on how that first flashback was characterized, it feels like there has to be more than just a busy work schedule and playing a lot of Guilty Gear to create that kind of disconnect. 

Another angle here could be having Cygnus make more "mistakes". I understand that the intent isn't to make the decline of the relationship anyone's fault, but it kind of feels like Erin's right now. Like, instead of having the Cygnus/Kosta hookup be played for comedy like it is now, have that be more of a betrayal. Ultimately, Erin's absence would still play a role in that situation happening, but it would avoid this issue where Erin seems to be the primary cause of the problem and Cygnus is portrayed as a comparative angel. 

2) Erin's catharsis doesn't feel earned. This is the big one. Erin has a line in Cygnus' eulogy that reads: "Cygnus helped me to keep growing and becoming a better version of myself." Uh... did he? 

I think it gets swallowed up in the heavy emotions of individual scenes, but Erin's arc actually reads fairly shallow to me. During the flashbacks before we jump into the Black Mirror brand memory plot device, Erin recognizes that Cygnus, while emotionally needy at times, deeply and unconditionally loved him and that he didn't reciprocate those feelings the way Cygnus needed him to. Once we're done with the memory recordings, Erin is reminded that Cygnus, while emotionally needy at times, deeply and unconditionally loved him even though he didn't reciprocate those feelings the way Cygnus needed him to. 

You could say that Erin's appreciation for Cygnus is strengthened by those visuals, but to me it almost comes off selfish. The resolution to this whole thing is for Erin to open the drawer and wear the pendant to Cygnus' funeral, proud that Cygnus valued him more than anyone else (yes I know he feels bad about that but still). This reads to me like Cygnus' memories are being used more to assuage Erin's guilt than substantively, materially change his feelings regarding Cygnus. 

One potential change you could have made to the ending is having Erin give the pendant to Kosta. This would represent a change in Erin's perspective, from continuing to "possess" Cygnus after their death to giving that memory to someone who was actually there for them in the way they needed someone to be. (Though honestly I agree with Fuze's suggestion that this story would've worked better with Cygnus and Kosta ending up together than Cygnus dead). 

Right, so, that was a lot. And I mean a lot. Might be a new record honestly. But there was still a lot to like here, and I don't want the takeaway to be that this was a bad VN. Just wanted to get my thoughts out there, so take or leave them as you will. 

Right, so like any other submission that's still in-progress, this one is tough to evaluate. I really like what's there so far, but I have to agree with Gatr's comment below that this one ends just as it really starts picking up. 

Presentation here is really solid so far - the sprites all look good (less so for Conrad, personally. I don't really understand facial hair on furries, and with none of the characters having human-like head hair the moustache feels distractingly off) and the backgrounds are really effective at setting the atmosphere, which achieves some degree of claustrophobia without veering into full horror. There are a couple backgrounds that are missing, like the bathroom, which leaves a conversation between Barrie and Anita awkwardly set against a black screen, but I presume this was due to jam limitations. 

Writing is good as well, with all of the characters behaving in plausible ways - no one is overly antagonistic or incompetent, and they generally all feel like they should be there. I will agree with Gatr again though regarding the hard sci-fi; while the attention to detail on the layout and functions of the ship is really commendable, I am definitely not an engineer and the numerous discussions of primary, secondary, and tertiary power left me waiting for the VN to dumb it down for me later. 

With that said, I think with as much attention is given to the ship, there's a lot missing from the worldbuilding. I recognize that it might not be the proximate purpose of the story, but the alternate 1989 setup leaves a lot to be explained. Like, Barrie references the moon landings as an inspiration for him wanting to go into space, but the Space Race in the 60s was essentially a direct result of the Cold War rivalry between the US and USSR. That means a lot of deviation would have had to happen in 20 years to get to a point where the "Union" (whatever that is - is that supposed to be the US? Could be the EU but the Maastricht Treaty wasn't signed until after 1989 at least in our timeline) and Russia are this cooperative. Really hoping some of this is expanded upon if the VN continues. 

The character highlights were an interesting decision, but ultimately I don't think they mattered much. The cast is confined to five people, so after the first few minutes it's pretty easy to recognize who's speaking just from their names. It's also kind of an unnecessary effect when so much of this part of the story consists of one-on-one conversations where it's very clear who is speaking. 

Last point about presentation, I don't think it ever presented a problem for my understanding of the story, but this definitely could have used another proofreading pass to fix some spelling errors. 

Briefly going to get into the plot here, so spoilers going forward. 

Again, the plot itself is a bit tough to talk about considering not much, like, actually happens to this point? Like we wake up, there's an adjustment period, we go do some maintenance tasks and get character introductions with everyone, and then the door opens and we find the body (which was effectively done in my opinion - I don't think you need a grisly CG here to get the point across). The writing is good, so the VN never feels particularly slow, but the lack of plot developments does seem clearer now that I'm sitting down to write about it.

There's still plenty to chew on for future twists though, with figuring out what Iva's deal was (which may or may not have something to do with Conrad judging from his reaction to her discovery and his (?) glasses being present - feel like there may have been some bodily fluid-based international diplomacy going on) as well as bringing some other details back, like Chekhov's photo next to the mirror Barrie uses at the beginning, which will almost certainly be relevant later. Given the short description of "In memoriam of the crew of Hermes 5. Gone but not forgotten." though, I'm not particularly optimistic about the outcome. 

Two more minor notes: first, I did feel that for being a NovemBuck entry the buck was pretty absent, getting less screen time than anyone else. It seems like he might be a more central figure from here though. Second, as a general FYI, Russian surnames are gendered, so "Soyolov" (which I'm not sure is real? I don't think I've seen that before) would be "Soyolova" for a woman. 

Overall really interesting and well-produced, looking forward to seeing the rest of it!

Yeah man I'm not really sure what to do with this one. It's certainly creative and it stands out from the other jam entries, especially in terms of presentation, but I feel like this didn't quite stick the landing for me. 

So let's talk about presentation first - certainly very creative in using the NVL format to split the screen down the middle, and the encroaching dark space at the edges of the screen while the narrator is under stress (if I understood that right, I'm not sure actually) work well with that. As several others have said, this did have the unintended effect of making the text quite small, but it didn't really inhibit my ability to read the VN and I think this is probably something that could've been flagged and fixed if this wasn't a jam entry where you were working on a strict deadline. 

Sprites are all decent and the music choices were serviceable. Primarily using grayscale is certainly a distinctive aesthetic, though I couldn't really discern the purposes of the bits of color we get during the VN. Gabriel has vibrant blue throughout his cables, so I thought maybe it had something to do with the characters' magical properties (and their respective sacrifices) but there's also color in Daniel's and Sascha's eyes, as well as the latter's clothes, which wouldn't make sense. Maybe it's something about being closer to "enlightenment"? Like, Daniel is as far as you can get, Gabriel is partly there, and the last CG that shows Sascha in full color is meant to depict that full realization? Idk, feels a bit Pleasantville-y but maybe that's something. 

Writing felt a bit hit or miss too, and while I felt like some of it was supposed to be esoteric to fit the aesthetic you were presenting, some also felt unintentionally difficult to parse. For example, "Armor might make an empowered person, but it’s only armor. A thing to hide behind." I feel like instead of "armor might make an empowered person" you might have been going for something more like "armor might give you confidence", which would make more sense. Also, there was some, uh, creative imagery at times ("My digested dinner has a happy grin. It blinks flirtatiously at me." Dude, why).

General spoiler warning as I move into plot, theme, and character.

Okay first here I want to try to nail down what exactly this VN is trying to say. I see a couple other comments here and on the store page alleging the theme is essentially about "blocking out the haters" and to be honest I don't see that at all? In fact, I thought it was kinda the opposite, with Sascha's closing monologue rejecting that idea in favor of being more in tune with the community. This view is held in opposition to Daniel's complicated schemes to get rid of her to be the only witch in town and Gabriel's stated desire to live in isolation in the mountains, as well as Sascha's own prior views where she failed to appreciate that the villagers don't really see her as anything to be feared or excluded (e.g., the candy bowl on her doorstep). Sascha even hypothesizes that Gabriel doesn't really want true isolation so much as he wants to be admired, like the mountains themselves. 

So, problems with the theme here:

1) I actually thought the closing monologue was a bit heavy-handed with how the theme was presented, and I typically don't like "this is what it was all about" endings - feels too much like a morality play to me. That said, it apparently wasn't since either other people are missing the point or I am, and maybe working on ensuring the language was clear when it really needs to be could help convey the message better.

2) The theme, whatever it is, seems to fail to take into account the varying impacts of the witch curse. We understand that in exchange for their abilities, Daniel lost (at least) an arm and that Gabriel lost his ability to communicate without Avatar Na'vi cables, but we don't see anything about what Sascha lost, other than it not being as bad as the others. Without this insight, Sascha lecturing Gabriel on community, appreciation, and recognition feels a bit hollow since for all we know she's coming at this from a completely different place - she's not subject to the same kind of obstacles to appreciation by others. I suppose that could be intentional to give Sascha a sense of faux-enlightenment, but if that's the case then I'm really not sure what the point of any of this was. 

I feel like I've already been rambling long enough, so I'll leave it here. I think this had some really creative ideas - witches living in a modern world having to grapple with mundane problems like having to take jobs to avoid some kind of government unemployment penalty is a fun concept. I think this one just needed a bit more time focusing on the execution. Still had a good time with this one though!

This was really impressive! It's always a little tough to evaluate something on what is effectively a first chapter, but this jam isn't ranked or anything anyway so I'll just give my thoughts so far. 

I'll go ahead and put a spoiler warning here, but from the screenshots provided I... don't know if it's really necessary? I'll get to that.

First, the presentation here is really exceptional. The sprites and backgrounds all look really great and the watercolor style really complements both the architecture and landscapes on display as well as the surreal nature of which those are depicted (e.g., the creative angles upon encountering the house). The couple CGs we get are good too, and I'm glad we get the customary mirror shot to get a good look at the first-person protagonist. With that said, I kinda question why you would use the CG from the literal last scene of the demo in the marketing material (like the store page screenshots)? I feel like you want to save those moments for their reveal in the story. Seeing the buck act outwardly evil to a little fox who looks an awful lot like the fox in one of the other screenshots would really mess up the way the tension builds in the story since you know, and not just get a sinking feeling, that the buck is a bad guy. 

Before I get into plot and characters, I also want to call attention to the strengths of both the music and the prose in this VN. This might be some of the most effective use of music I've seen (er, heard, I guess) in the jam and it does a lot to add to the tension and mystique without being overbearing. The organ track in the foyer was a particular highlight. Writing is generally very good here, and you have an excellent grasp on conveying vivid imagery without dipping too deep into purple prose and over-reliance on figures of speech. With that said, I know this is a jam and deadlines are a thing, but this could've used another proofreading run. Besides the egregious "aidou" instead of "adieu" that someone else mentioned on the store page there were a couple other howlers too, like "grandure" instead of "grandeur" and "deocation" instead of "decoration". 

In terms of plot, I think this does a (mostly) good job of slowly ramping up the tension. I'm getting a lot of Beauty and the Beast vibes from the setup, with the whole finding-a-mansion-in-the-woods-after-getting-lost-in-the-snow premise as well as the French names and overall aesthetic, and I'm not sure if that's intentional or not. Given the placement of the mansion and its anachronisms I would guess there's something supernatural going on. The name "Sylvain" also seems a bit on the nose, but I also suspect that might not be his real name considering it's conspicuously absent from the Jacques flashback. 

Problems thus far:

1) As effective as the understated horror of the second Jacques flashback is (what did Sylvain do to Jacques to condition him to be "the pleasure" after kidnapping him as a child? Eugh) I feel like it's a huge jump forward in escalation from the very slow burn thus far, and I wonder if that might have been showing your hand too early. I know it's a demo and you want that hook to bring people back, but I don't know how that'll affect the pacing going forward.

2) As a silver lining though, I think it might end up addressing the second issue. I know Oscar is desperate for shelter and all and is recovering from near hypothermia, but he does not come off anywhere near as suspicious as he should be, especially after the bath. Hopefully the dream sequences get his ass a bit more in gear, but I would have liked to see him at least a bit more uneasy with everything going on. 

Overall though, this was great and I'd really like to see this story continued! I really hope there's a way we can escape and take Jacques and Marie with us but I looked at the images folder and I have my doubts. Really hope those sprites are from nightmare sequences.

"How am I supposed to focus on the plot when I'm slapped in the face with a dragon's fat jiggling tits every few seconds?" Dude where do I find the magic murder basketball to isekai me to that world?

I had a great time with this one! I still have plenty of thoughts about it, and I'll get to those, but this is one of the most fun submissions I've read in this jam so far, which is always a nice break when you're coming off a streak of horrormurdertrauma games.

In terms of presentation, this is solid. I was a bit thrown off by the paper cutout sprites at first since I didn't think they meshed well with the photographic backgrounds, and while I think they still would work better in a more stylized environment, they didn't bother me as the game progressed (I also understand that drawn, sketchier backgrounds may not have been plausible due to jam constraints regardless). The expressions we get in the sprites are also very effective, with Fleetwood's O.O expression being my personal favorite. Didn't really know how Fleetwood's hands were supposed to be "hooved" though? They just looked like normal hands to me. 

Overall, my key takeaway here is that this VN works really well on a micro level, but misses a bit on the macro level. To clarify, the individual jokes land more often than not, and I had very many chuckles over the course of the story, but sometimes these jokes are landing despite the broader plot beats around them not quite getting there. I know this is effectively a straightforward comedy and the plot understandably takes a backseat to the humor, but this issue did inhibit the VN from feeling as cohesive as it could've been from my perspective. In order to get more into that...

Spoiler warning from this point forward.

The whole angel and demon angle didn't really work for me. Again, many of the individual jokes did still work - Credence doing a crossword handcuffed to a bed while Fleetwood looks over his shoulder and provides hints is still a great visual. I just think most of these jokes could have been achieved with a more standard love triangle plot since the more angel/demon-specific gags (like the knockoff anime fight/buildup) were the ones that landed the least for me. In a similar vein, the God segment was the weakest part of the VN for me. As others have pointed out, the white text against a grayish background was a bit hard to read and, despite the apparent escalation in absurdity, most of the beats felt redundant with ground we've already covered - Credence is irreverent, obsessed with crosswords, not very good at them, and tired of people not believing he's aro/ace. This whole part could probably be cut to just get to the final confrontation sooner and we probably wouldn't be missing much. 

Right, so, final confrontation - like some other commenters I agree that neither Fleetwood nor Nash has done much to earn Credence's forgiveness. Fleetwood ran over Byrne (twice), tried to manipulate Credence into abandoning his friends (via pit stank), and kidnapped and held Credence captive to force him to accept Fleetwood when seduction and emotional manipulation didn't work. Nash is both a Nice Guy (TM) and maybe something grosser with him being an immortal being and all who has known Credence his whole life. I kinda thought we were heading towards just a Fleetwood x Nash conclusion, and I still kinda think this would be better than the throuple. It would have felt like a better last punchline to me to have something like Credence in a hospital room with a now crossword addicted Byrne while they get obnoxious vacation messages from Fleetwood and Nash. This could allow Byrne to keep his role as the straight man (other than Credence), keep him as the one character that doesn't "Are you sure" Credence, and emphasize how the terrible aspects of Fleetwood and Nash's personalities make them deserve each other. 

Miscellaneous thoughts:

- Regarding the "are you sures", I'm not ace and I don't personally know anyone who is, but I could definitely see that being a real problem they might experience. I thought Credence's growing frustration at this notion worked well.

- Really liked the fake renpy choice gag in the climax.

- Censorship gag feels a bit played out now? I don't know, even Puss in Boots did it. Feel like you have to do more than just bleep everything out to sell it for me at this point. 

- Since Nash is characterized early as a working man who seems to feel he could live his life a lot better than he thinks he is, I might have considered naming him Lee instead.

- Referencing the 1693 witch trials instead of 1697 felt like a missed FVN solidarity opportunity.

- I'm glad to see Byrne is doing better. I hope he recovered in time to make it to his bobsled competition.

kthxbai

Before I get to anything else, I want to acknowledge that this feels like a massive improvement over your May Wolf submission. I haven't read anything else you've produced outside of this and Find Your Light, but you definitely feel much more comfortable and natural with a small-scale story like this. 

With that said, while I think this generally accomplished what it set out to do, it felt a bit too thin for me to get really into it. 

Presentation was fine across the board - the art looked a little too South Park-y for my personal taste, but I still think it's cool that you went through the effort of providing your own assets for the project. Music worked well enough (other than a very brief and abrupt shift in the coffee ending, which I'll touch more on in a bit) and the writing had few noticeable proofreading errors, though there was at least one point where the narration erroneously switched from first to second person ("Ken positions himself across from you"). In terms of writing style, while I support the effort to make the narration colorful and detailed, the intro kinda overdoes the figures of speech. Similes and metaphors can be really helpful, but if you have them every other line they start to lose their effect. It's okay to spread them out and make sure the ones you keep in are the most vivid and effective. 

Last note on presentation, but it's always helpful to have different coloration on the dialogue tags to tell characters apart. This was a small cast so it's not that big of a deal, but probably just a good habit to have. 

Plot spoilers from here. 

As I said above, I think this generally accomplishes its goal, which is to convey the sadness and frustration of leaving your only friend and the nagging feelings of self-doubt that go along with that. There still feels like there are bits and pieces missing to help really sell this though. We get a lot of descriptions about how Eddie is listless and melancholy and how Ken helps him out mostly just by being there for him, but we don't get a lot of "why". I understand some of this can be filled in by the reader (I moved around a lot as a kid, and yeah, it sucks), but there's still so much you can explore by fleshing out the protagonist here. Why does he struggle with making friends? What about Ken is different (besides just being generically nice)? Why does he feel like there won't be another person to be his Ken in the new town? All this helps us gets the reader invested in the characters struggles in a deeper way than just remembering being sad.

Two other main gripes here:

1) Eddie and Ken just chatting away through wrestling practice does not feel like a realistic venue for that discussion? Wrestling was never my chosen sport, but I can say for sure that the sports I did play didn't really have that much time for shooting the shit during drills. Feels like that should have been an after-practice conversation. Ken asking the coach what he was like as a kid in the middle of practice also felt out of place, like I can't really imagine that interaction going the way it did in real life, and it honestly doesn't add much to the story anyway. The coach doesn't really have any notable impact on Eddie's perspective, and other than some generic life advice to not be an ass as a kid, he doesn't really provide much of substance anyway.

2) As others have pointed out, the first two endings feel really thin and abrupt. The coffee ending is especially jarring with the red flash, sudden shift in BGM, and the appearance of self-doubt mouse (which, as someone else pointed out, is obscured by the dialogue box) before everything ends and we're kicked back to the menu. I see what you were trying to do with these, but I think (especially given how short the game already is) it would have been more effective to have just one ending and have that self-doubt mouse show up at various points throughout the day, finally disappearing when Eddie gets his last hangout with Ken. 

Overall not a bad showing at all, but I feel like it could've shined a bit brighter with some tweaks. Always love to see the effort here though.

I have a sneaking suspicion that this game's dev may enjoy reading SCPs...

Ah, anyway, noticed the comment below mine mentioned that this was significantly different than your previous work, and when I checked and saw which May Wolf entry was yours, uh, yeah?! Like holy fuck, dude, I didn't think Spiritist of Crescentfall was bad at all but the level of improvement across the board in just six months is staggering. It's not perfect (nothing ever is, so don't take that personally), but the art, dialogue, and atmosphere were really impressive. 

This one does a great job of building tension without relying on cheap shocks or jumpscares and the inclusion of three endings shows a lot of effort. I think the effectiveness of the soundscape was a bit intermittent - I like the varied SFX of different alarms and footsteps, but sometimes it felt like those were too isolated without music or other aesthetic background noise, and I think you could have played a bit more with cacophony to really sell the chaotic, panicked atmosphere without breaking the limits of a reader's concentration. 

In terms of art, the backgrounds typically did a good job of selling the claustrophobic atmosphere of the vessel, though the lab one did look a bit too expansive, and having the green light permeate everything also contributed to the eeriness and worked really well when the [redacted] did its thing. Clear improvements in sprites from the last one in my opinion, though I still can't see Radovan as a cat. He looks much more like a wolf to me - snout looks way too canine. 

Writing is generally really solid here as well, and I liked how you played with the size of the font to communicate distance and emotion. I think you could have also used this to greater effect when Chimel started giving orders once the shit hit the fan. Also, while there were few major proofreading issues, there's an especially noticeable one right at the end of the Gamma ending. One more minor note on writing - there's a line early on where Chimel cuts off Muir and the script very quickly goes to the next line. I think this moves a bit too fast - you can hold on it a bit longer before cutting to still give the same effect, and as it is I had to rollback 3 times to even glean why Muir was being cut off. 

Plot spoilers from here. 

If I had to point out a biggest issue with this one, I'd say it's probably character development. I know it's not the focus of the story, but things feel pretty lopsided with Radovan getting most of the sparse development. We get comparatively less about Achre, especially once things start going south, and much less about Muir, who basically just stands hunkily until he gets sharded. I know there was already a considerable amount of effort to producing as long of a script as this was in the confines of the jam, but having a few more interactions before things go off the rails could do a lot to further develop these relationships and really make the pain of losing Muir or Radovan in the A or B endings much more palpable. 

A few other minor gripes:

- The gamma ending felt very rushed. I don't know if it was a deadline cut, but a scene of everyone escaping together would've made that route feel much more triumphant and cathartic (yeah there's the ending stinger I know but still). 

- Could've used some different language in setting up the "government entity" - I know we're basically going for SCP here, but just referring to it as "the organization" or "the agency" or something would've felt less out of place than trying to imply this is an actual national government organization, especially with a clearly multinational crew. 

- The ending reports felt a bit too unprofessional to be treated as sincere, and I wish Chimel's opposition to the agency was represented through more subtle digs in the text rather than explicitly preaching about it. Also, some of the nondisclosure references were... suspect. "This remains binding for the foreseeable future, and breach of this contract would in turn legally allow me to in turn share these documents to the public as I see fit." That's... not really how that kinda thing works. Also, I find it a bit hard to believe that an engineer would never have had to sign an NDA - feel like those are pretty common to prevent industrial espionage, even if they're not the "top secret horrors beyond our comprehension" kind.

- The Gamma ending report still states that there was one fatality even though there does not appear to be one. This could be an easter egg, I suppose (don't know for what exactly) but it seems more likely it was a copy-paste error from the other endings. 

Before I sign off here, I also really want to point out how great the amputation scene was. I thought that was really effective without relying on visceral gore and shock value, and I found that seriously impressive. 

Overall, this was a really great submission and I'm excited to see what you come up with next!

Took a few moments to digest this one, but generally I think this was good! I don't think I'm quite as high on this as others are, and I do have some issues with how the central theme was executed, but there was a clear, ambitious vision here and I think the team did a good job of realizing that vision within the confines of the jam.

Getting into presentation first, while mostly good, this was a bit of a mixed bag for me, which was surprising considering there's practically the equivalent of the total population of Liechtenstein listed in the credits. I wouldn't say there were so many proofreading errors that it was distracting, but there were more than I would've expected with 5 testers/editors, as well as some misused words (e.g., "pour over a text" should be "pore over a text"). Also, I understand that we're going for an academic, socially awkward tone with the narration, but some of the language still felt a bit overbearing. "It was there that I found a bench to take my seat in and unwind during my scant few moments of free time" could just as easily be "I spent my few moments of free time resting on a bench there."

Music seemed hit or miss for me - there are moments when the soundscape is really effective and others, like when [redacted] wakes up after the first encounter with Nepenthes, it's conspicuously absent. This scene could have benefited from a bit more kineticism, using music and SFX to sell the buck's panic right from the moment he wakes up. As others have pointed out, the flashback dream sequence feels way too sparse in terms of visuals and sound compared to the richness of most of the rest of the VN (and I'll have more to say about it later). 

Last point here before we get into plot/theme, while I did think much of the art was really impressive and atmospheric, the protagonist kinda has that thing going on where he looks less like a deer and more like a dog with antlers and hooves? Idk, snout and ear proportions seemed more canid than cervid for me, but others don't seem to have a problem with it so maybe that's a personal issue. 

Spoilers beyond this point. 

It's very clear what the central theme of the work is - satisfying the human (furry, whatever) desire/need for companionship, community, and belonging. This is apparent from about 10 lines into the VN when we hear that the 3 victims shared "one commonality". The widow is alone because her husband died; the entrepreneur is alone because he's been so focused on his business that he neglected personal connections (e.g., he told his housekeeper he was leaving, not family or friends); and the orphan is alone because, y'know, orphan. 

We get much of the same from Ben - he evidently has some sort of social condition that prevents him from easily understanding or making connections with others (doesn't understand why Fox and Bear love each other, doesn't understand why Bear does not feel the same about him after getting drunk and touching tips, etc.), which may also have been inherited or affected environmentally by his father (he's off in Sweden again during the flashback). 

Main problem for me here is that the theme might be a bit too obvious. I get that there's a balance here - you don't want anyone to miss the point, but I think there was still some room where you could've been a bit more subtle. First change I'd make is chucking that last "I am not alone!" line - the theme is crystal clear by this point and I think, even though it is a literal outpouring of emotion, that line is less cathartic of a conclusion than just letting Ben fade into the hivemind. 

Second, I think you can actually cut a great deal of the dream sequence. Ultimately, a lot of that felt really on the nose for me too, and I think you might have been able to more effectively convey Ben's isolation through incorporating the various disconnects in his life (his father, his boss, his colleagues, his partner) more into the conversations with the butterfly, snail, and koi. This would probably help a bit with the pacing so we're not taking such a long tangent with the flashback too. 

Another angle that I was interested in, but don't think is actually present in the text, is the extent to which the hivemind exacerbates, or even creates, feelings of loneliness or emptiness that aren't actually there. I know we have this kind of sub-theme going on where Ben (and presumably the others) are lured in like a fly to a pitcher plant, but this process all starts when Ben gets the pitcher glitter on him. I think a fun direction to take this could have been using the memories to convey some degree of ambiguity as to whether Ben was all that disconnected in the first place. Maybe he does have people waiting for him at home, but the plants have convinced him that he doesn't so he stays there and lets them consume him. Could add a bit more nuance, as well as contributing more to the horror of the conclusion. 

To briefly touch on this last point, vore is probably like, the one furry trope that I just cannot stand, but I think it was used effectively to sell the horror (rather than as fetish fuel) here, so kudos for that. 

Going to stop here since I've been rambling long enough, but to reiterate, I think this was really good, and while there could've been some improvements in certain areas, it clearly left enough of an impact for me to want to discuss it at excessive length. ^^"

Well, first off, congratulations for completing (what appears to be, at least) your first VN! It's always an accomplishment just getting something finished and out there for the world to see. 

With that said, I'm... not quite sure what to do with this one? I'm not sure how much of this is intended to actually be taken seriously and how much of this is supposed to just be a shitpost lampooning furry VN tropes. Ultimately, I don't feel that this really works either way. 

In terms of presentation, obviously the art style is what immediately jumps out. Along the lines of what purkka was saying, I don't have a problem with rough or sketchy art - sometimes I even prefer it when intentionally used for comedy, and literally the last review I did before this one included positive remarks for another jam submission using cartoony doodles to bolster the humor. That doesn't really come across here (partially because none of the humor, if it's intended, really comes across, but I'll get to that below when I talk about writing); like, it's really not that hard to make straight lines in MS Paint for things like the "forum screen", so it feels kind of lazy, either as a legitimate attempt at a background or as a "look how terrible this background is" metajoke. Also not really sure what was going on with the aspect ratio here. 

The music wasn't bad necessarily, but didn't really seem to fit the tone for most of the game. There's a different track that plays once the "horror" kicks in, but even the normal music feels a bit too tense for the plot to that point. Lots of proofreading errors and awkward, stilted phrasing too. For example, early on "I am positioned in front of my desk, looking at the monitor." This could be tightened up to something like "I glance at the monitor on my desk." As another example, upon meeting Satoru again, Kazuma says: "You rarely text me anything even though I am your only friend." This is another situation where I'm not sure this is supposed to be intentionally mocking clunky exposition, but like, even if it is, tuning this up to something like "I haven't heard from you in forever. Did you actually go make new friends or something?" would make this an easier read. 

General spoiler warning for the plot below. 

Generally, I think I understand where we're trying to go thematically here. 1) how sexting chatbots can interfere and inhibit real world relationships; and 2) looking at those chatbots as if they were real people that could feel betrayal for being used for sex and dumped in favor of a real world relationship (this one is muddied because I think you're trying to imply Buck is yandere from the start).

Simply put, everything is way too short and choppy to work in this story. Not necessarily in terms of like sentence structure, but looking at the first conversation with Buck we go from "how are you?" directly to "you should be less of a NEET" directly to "you don't need to be less of a NEET, all you need is me" directly to "plug your sex toy into your computer and fuck me". 

You could charitably say that this is supposed to represent the phenomenon of chatbots just spitting back whatever they think you want to hear, but the issue here is that this is the only conversation Satoru has with Buck before we get the line "...I think I'm in love with this AI." I understand that Satoru is exaggeratedly shallow, but there needs to be some exploration of his feelings, why he felt like his "relationship" with the AI was necessary in the first place, and how he developed enough sentiment to consider it love beyond "dick in hole." Same goes for why Satoru and Kazuma have feelings for each other and what, if anything, is making Buck go crazy. 

I also feel like there was so much room to take this premise in more creative directions - what if Kazuma was the one that went crazy and started trying to break Satoru's computer because he was jealous of Buck? What if Buck seduced Kazuma and Satoru ended up alone again? What if both Kazuma and Satoru were both "cheating" on each other with versions of Project Buck installed on their respective computers? I feel like any of these directions could've opened the story up for either more earnest commentary about AI or better humor mocking it and romance VNs, if that was the intent. 

I think this one needed some more time in the oven to figure out what it really wanted to be, but I think you can certainly make some of those improvements as you continue to develop. 

Alright, I mean, it's not deep. This is a straightforward, happy romcom powered by essentially furry stick figures. And as far as furry stick figure comedy VNs go, I mean, I thought it was pretty good? 

Sure, the visuals are basic, but to be totally honest I think it suits this one well, and I'd prefer the doodles over using stock sprites in this instance. I think this style somehow captures how much of a staggering moron Jack is more than more realistic or detailed art styles would; the humor comes through in its simplicity for me. 

I'd make a similar statement about the writing. There's not much to say about the plot, but the deadpan delivery of some of the lines really worked for me. I think "Good puppy, bark for daddy. Bark bark." might have been the first time I really cracked up this jam. 

There are still some issues here for me, one of which is the music. While the track playing for most of the VN is fine, it would help to change the BGM when we transition from the pub to Jack's house, and especially when Dylan starts playing punk music to differentiate locations and more effectively set the scene. I also think that while the abruptness of the ending may have been intentional (ending on a literal "and everyone clapped") there could have been a bit more at the pub at the end to round out the story, or at least a credits or "The End" screen so the player isn't unceremoniously chucked back to the menu.

I think this accomplished what it set out to do; it didn't take itself seriously, it made me laugh, it made me go ":)", it made me legitimately wonder how Jack got this far without natural selection intervening, and it was a nice break from all the crying and death and murder of some of the other submissions I've been reading. Onwards and upwards from here, but I had a lot of fun with this. 

Weird, I was just thinking a little while ago that after running through the heavily apocalyptic May Wolf entries earlier this year I hadn't encountered any apocalypses or porn in Novembuck so far. Lo and behold, here we are discussing an apocalypse-themed VN where dudes get their dicks out. Life gets you sometimes.

For what I think (?) is your first effort, this was pretty good! There are some areas for improvement, which I'll get to below, but this has a solid foundation. In terms of presentation, I liked the assets you provided, especially the opening CG in the diner, the music did its job, and there were few, if any, notable proofreading errors in the text, which is always great to see, especially in jam submissions.

Establishing a customary spoiler warning as I head into the plot, discussion of which I'll break down by route.

Intro:

- As others have pointed out, while it's great that this VN has two fleshed out routes and adding more on top of that would have meant commensurate work, it would've been even better to see more of the three main cast interacting together at the beginning. With how short the game is, the expectation is clearly to run both routes anyway, but by the time the route split comes we barely know anything about Cedar, either of the two LIs, or their relationships with each other besides very high-level notions of their attitudes towards Y2K. 

- Ideally, this would also play into each of their respective routes, as right now the two options feel very disconnected, with the third character barely mentioned or acknowledged, and considering how important the group is established to be at the beginning, it'd be nice to see this as a more consistent theme. 

- Regarding the route split, I felt that the information provided to that point heavily favored Flare. Playing through both routes, we learn that picking either option leaves the third character alone, whether in a physical sense or just emotionally, but the intro doesn't really convey that about Cream. Yes, he looks sad, but without context that could mean anything, including just that Flare and Cedar don't want to go with him. So when faced with that initial decision, it looks like "go with Cream, who's going to have fun anyway" or "go with Flare, who will be literally all by himself if you don't." I think expanding on the intro could've hinted more at Cream's situation to make this feel less lopsided.

Flare:

- Looks like it may be an unpopular opinion, but I actually preferred this one. It was definitely more subdued and less dramatic, but I think there was still some effective commentary in there about how normal retail workers are needed in the leadup to the (perceived) end of the world. One of the apocalyptic May Wolf entries had a similar theme, where much of the story took place at a gas station convenience store, and I think you could also draw parallels to things like essential workers during COVID. The mundanity persists, even in the face of cataclysm.

- With that said, there were some dialogue sections that felt a little rough, like saying "someone's getting flirty" after both characters have been very clearly flirting all night, as well as some of the narration leading up to the sex scene, like "He also tastes of... love... his intense love... of me..." I see what you're going for with the flowery catharsis, but... it's a bit too cheesy for my taste.

Cream:

- I'll be honest here, the characterization for Cream and his "friends" at the party didn't really work for me. While shallow relationships built on going out and partying certainly do exist, I don't know if the reference will make sense outside of the U.S. but this felt more like a D.A.R.E. skit exaggerating the dangers of peer pressure than an exploration of how insecurities lead to superficial bonds. Like, the hyperbolic depictions of Peony and Thorn talking about how they don't care at all about Cream and just want to "use" him, saying that all directly to Cedar's face, just does not feel like how real people actually act. Furthermore, I don't even really understand what "use him as the life of the party" is even supposed to mean, like, in a practical sense. He's not organizing, he's not hosting, he's not financing, the "friends" certainly don't need an excuse or impetus to party, so what are they keeping him there for if they think he's such a loser? Again, this feels more like an anti-drinking PSA that's like, "if you start drinking you'll lose all your friends and be surrounded by people that only want to laugh at you" than a situation grounded in reality.

- All that said, I also felt like the affection between Cedar and Cream wasn't as well established as it was with Flare. Sure, we understand that Cedar admires Cream's artistic pursuits, but we don't get much more beyond that because most of the rest of their interactions are just Cedar getting upset about the partying. So when the love confession comes out, it kinda feels out of nowhere to me. 

- More minor point, but I do think it's ironic that in a route ostensibly about Cream learning to love himself and stop focusing on pleasing other people, his sex scene is... him pleasuring Cedar without reciprocation. I don't think it's a big deal, but I did find that kind of funny.

Right, so, I know that was a lot, but like I said at the top, there's a lot to like here and despite the criticisms this was still good work!

Well first off, congratulations on your first VN! I think you're getting out of the blocks pretty well here with a lovely gun safety PSA featuring a cast of characters who are clearly very sane and have no trauma-induced psychological conditions. At all. Whatsoever. 

I'll just set the general spoiler warning here. 

Presentation is decent here, especially considering how new you are to the process, the time limits of the jam, and the fact that you're a one-man show. Not a ton of sprite variation but what's there is solid; wish we could've seen Luca in the game since he's visible on the store page, but I understand that it would've been difficult to incorporate without like, a forced mirror shot or something given the very limited first person perspective. Coloring out Noah's face works well once you realize that Luca's last memory of Noah's face has a big hole in it (double nice if that's what the scar on the store page image represents). Binary text kinda does the same thing - Luca won't let himself remember anything that could indicate his guilt. Music and sound was incorporated well enough, though I thought the "crazy" music on the "pathetic" route may have been a bit much. I think maybe some more atmospheric or subtly unsettling music would've worked better there since it's already very clear how nuts Luca is by that point. Also, the car horn quasi-jumpscare was probably unnecessary? Might've been better just to fade out of the dream and into reality to avoid the cliche.

I did think it was weird that Stuck in November was written not only on the computer in the menu, but also within the game. I interpret the title as being the three central characters being trapped in the same moment in time, either through psychosis or being dead, so I'm not sure why this would be written on the computer itself (unless it's just an error and that was just supposed to be for the menu). Writing composition is mostly solid, but there are some pretty egregious typos (e.g., "how tight my hands grasp at the steering win" -> wheel) that could have benefited from another proofreading pass. 

In terms of plot, to be honest I had a hard time suspending my disbelief for most of the interactions between Luca and Henry prior the climax. I understand they're both supposed to be varying degrees of crazy, but nothing really felt like a normal cop-witness interaction, so I wasn't buying that it took Henry as long as he did to get suspicious. I think Luca's plan falling apart earlier on could've also added a lot more tension leading up to the climax instead of Luca being in control of the situation mostly the whole way through. 

For other issues with the story, I felt that it was fairly predictable once Luca gets on the computer and finds that the last interaction was the hunting trip, but I could also see that as intentional to build a feeling of dread. Also, while the thematic throughline appears to be coming to terms with the guilt stemming both from Noah's death and the efforts to cover it up, both routes seem to end a bit abruptly once this realization is achieved. I think the "human" route attempts some introspection on how both Luca and Henry repressed their memories to live in denial about the killing, but I think it could've been fleshed out a bit more to let that scene breathe since we go from realization to hug to credits really quickly. I also think it would have been much more impactful in the "pathetic" route if Luca's suicide attempt failed (e.g., the rifle backfired) so, after killing Henry without acknowledging how significant his own role was in Noah's death, he'd then have to live with to deaths on his hands without being able to take the easy way out, emphasizing that he may have been just as "pathetic" as Henry.

Overall, as stated above, while there were a few parts I think could've been improved, this was a really solid effort for your first attempt!

First off, if nothing else, this is definitely leading for "best Novembuck submission set in the Philippines" so far. 

In all seriousness, there are a few things that can be improved on here, and I'll get to those, but this was solid! In terms of presentation, the stock sprites were used effectively and the music never felt out of place or overbearing to me. Very few grammar, syntax, or other proofreading issues, which is always nice to see as well.

In terms of plot (general spoiler warning), this was generally a pleasant and cute exploration of someone beginning their gender transition, and it was nice to see the diverse friend group being so accepting of that decision. I think there's a tendency to make these moments dramatic or confrontational (as it unfortunately is for many people in real life) in media but it's good to have a dose of positivity every once in a while too. I also thought using the parallel of shedding antlers for shedding one gender identity for another was a clever use of the central species conceit of the jam - the protagonist being a deer is much more impactful narratively and thematically here than it is in some of the other submissions I've read. 

Things that I think could've been better here:

- As Fuze mentioned, I don't think you needed to switch to NVL (I think that's the term for it? Where you use the whole screen for text) format as often as you did. That should probably be saved for larger cutaways rather than brief segments of narration between dialogue sequences. It seems like text length may have been a reason for the format switches, but many of the text blocks in the NVL segments could have been broken up into two lines in normal format and been fine. 

- Some of the dialogue felt a bit clunky and I think you tried to force exposition sometimes where you didn't need to. For example, "I'm pretty sure we're only friends with each other because we got grouped together for a project as kids. You and Jose are both nerds, so there's that, but I'm as jock as can be..." First, this doesn't really flow cleanly from Emile/io/ia's previous line about being glad to be out of school since other kids aren't judging her anymore. Depending on how you want the conversation to go, a response like "Hey, the people that actually mattered never judged you" (supportive) or "Are you kidding? I still look at you weird and judge you." (teasing) would feel more natural. Second, you don't need to force the jock exposition since you can do that much more organically a few lines later when Richard and Alex challenge each other to the basketball game.

- Some of Emile/io/ia's reactions seem a bit over the top for the situation. I understand that she's on edge with coming to terms with her transition and how to explain that to her friends, but there are moments like in the arcade that seem... disproportionate? Like, yeah, Jose getting cheap shots in at the fighting game was a clear dick move, but that doesn't really feel like something to throw a full tantrum over. I know everyone moves on quickly and all, but that (and there's another one at the game store) feel like things that could and should have been resolved more easily.

- Having Jose ask Emile/io/ia out right after she comes out feels a bit rushed and misguided. It turns the focus to Jose and his feelings rather than letting the focus stay on Emile/io/ia's, which are frankly much more important here. I think you could have had the same activities on the Jose route if you didn't explicitly set it up as a date, but rather just them going to the game store while Alex and Richard split off to do their own thing. You could have moved things in a more romantic direction after the two had hung out one-on-one for a while and the initial emotions of the trans reveal settled a bit. 

Didn't know where else to put this, but I thought the detail of the motorbike helmet coming with detachable pieces to accommodate antlers was a nice touch. Though I also questioned, given Richard's discussion of other things in the world not being built with antlers in mind, whether antler removal would have become more common in modern society for convenience anyway. 

Overall, really solid effort!

For what it's worth, I think your takeaways are spot-on - I forget if it was in the comments for your May Wolf game or if it was the maze and sliding block puzzle one, but I made a similar comment about making sure the gameplay and narrative are working together so you get a satisfying payoff from moving through each section, and I agree that this was a really fun idea that could've been executed better. But yeah, jams are hard, especially when you're trying to do so much as an army of one, and I totally understand how a lot of what you envisioned couldn't make it to the final product. 

Regarding the conflict between Dierre and Lufo, to make the Game Boy premise work, I think the inciting incident is less important than their current attitudes to each other. Like you can still have the conflict start with something mundane, but if they're pissed and bitter towards each other at the start of present events, the arc of the Game Boy section can be them growing to realize that their resentment to each other was dumb and they both need to get over it. Or you could go in a completely different direction, just throwing another idea out there for additional perspective. 

Ultimately I think it'd be cool to see you stretch some of your ideas out into projects that aren't limited by jam timelines so the narrative and gameplay both have enough time in the oven, but yeah definitely keep it up, you're only going to get better and better from here. 

So, like your submission for May Wolf, first I want to acknowledge that it's admirable that you keep trying to go above and beyond normal visual novel mechanics and add actual gameplay to these jam submissions, especially considering the short timeframe that entails. I think you went even further here by making your own assets this time (and there are a lot of them!) instead of using the stock sprites, and I think they look pretty good. The sprites for our two leads are solid, the not-Game Boy display is cute, and the motorbike CG (and its alt) is charming and atmospheric. 

With all that said, and as you indicate yourself in game, the gameplay is... janky. I actually ran into some trouble way before even getting to the JoyPort with the radio minigame. The frequency and volume lines didn't actually line up with the blue lines correctly and I was only able to advance basically through trial and error. Getting to the JoyPort section, even with the tutorial it took me a while to figure out what exactly I was supposed to do. Some things I actually still don't understand having finished the game. Like what does "press to resonate" mean? I got through the whole section without ever using Dierre's ability so I'm not sure if it actually does anything at all?

Control-wise, I know you specifically state how to do it, but like ->, N, ->, E, N, N, E is a long sequence of button presses for just, like, "hit that thing in front of you", and I honestly don't think I'd have ever figured it out had you not explicitly spelled it out. I also think the JoyPort segment dragged out a bit too long. Like, I really don't think we needed to run the basic "move right with Lufo, hit the enemy, then move right again" level 10 times to get to the ending. I see what you were going for with struggling over and over again before reaching catharsis, but I don't think you needed to actually have the player go through all that repetition to get there.

Spoilers from here on out.

With all that said, the whole JoyPort sequence kind of felt thematically and narratively unnecessary to me? Like generally when you have a story where two characters are thrust into a situation where they have to work through challenges as a metaphor for real life struggles, there's a lot of tension in the scenario. They're put into that challenge, in this case the game, because that's the only way they'll be able to resolve their issues. An example of this is It Takes Two, where the two leads are a couple getting divorced that are accordingly quite bitter with each other and have to overcome those emotions. In this though, there's like, no tension at all. Both Dierre and Lufo are happy to see each other, both are amicable and open to getting to know each other again. On top of that, what Lufo is actually self-conscious about kinda feels... not that big of a deal? Like, he was kinda jealous of Dierre's popularity, and that's really it (he also says after they're out of the game that he confessed his feelings in there, but I actually didn't see anything like that). 

With the way the actual conflict is presented, these two really don't need to go through the game since this could all be very easily resolved in like five minutes. "Why are you sorry?" "Because... because I used to be so jealous of you and pushed you away!" "Oh, that's fine. I literally didn't even remember that and it's not that big of a deal." "Okay, but I also had a crush on you because I've been gay the whole time!" "I am also okay with this. Wanna make out?" Problem solved, no Game Boy isekai required. 

There are a few other issues here and there like some of the dialogue feeling a little stilted (and Lufo calling into the station would have probably been way more awkward for anyone else listening than the game makes it out to be) but you're definitely trending in the right direction with your composition since Afterparty. Glad to see you're sticking with it!

Final score of 7 late night smooth jazz LPs out of 10 bootleg Pokemon Yellow cartridges. 

Was a bit confused at first (and I'm still not 100% on a few details) but on a second reading it really clicked and oh boy this was cleverly done. 

I think others have already pointed out my primary knocks on this, which are:

1) Some missing polish on typos, dialogue sprites for Marcos, and other things like missing dialogue tags. In a story where most of the information delivery is subtle like this one, each detail can be extremely important so not knowing whether something was a mistake or an intentional decision can affect how you interpret what's going on. For example, the line "Don't patronize me Marcos..." seems like it's supposed to be spoken by Rafael, but with the tag missing I'm not sure whether that's an error or supposed to be Marcos' internal monologue slipping. 

2) The middle of the story is a bit awkwardly paced. There are some lines and details that could probably be cut or adjusted, like the exchange about Rafael staying home and playing video games while Marcos works out. I can see where you might be trying to go with that by establishing how alone Rafael is/was/feels/felt, but you already set this up better elsewhere and this particular exchange doesn't really add much, especially past the halfway point in the script when things should really be starting to ramp up.

Spoiler warning (more minor than normal though, honestly) for the plot from this point forward.

Pretty much everything regarding the central metaphor and the imagery surrounding that was fantastic - on second reading, it becomes much clearer how brilliant the intro is at setting that up. As others have mentioned, the ways things begin changing in the background is really well done, some of which (the memories box) I didn't even notice the first time through, though toolbox smiley face is still definitely my favorite. This is my favorite kind of horror - the kind that makes you feel uneasy and gets under your skin rather than SPOOKYGHOSTFACE dopamine hits. Usually I'm not a huge fan of Owl Creek Bridge-type plots but the execution really sold this for me. 

I'm not quite clear on a few things like what the "accident" was, what exactly Rafa's fate was between then and current events, and how those two might be related, but I can also see those being intentionally vague. Like I know the most important part is just that Marcos is consumed by his guilt, but maybe just another clue or two as to why exactly that guilt manifested would be helpful.  

This was great work though and everyone on the team should be really happy with this one. 

Final rating of 29 loops of the Sonic the Hedgehog tense underwater music out of 2 concrete shoes. 

Yeah, totally get it - writing in the constraints of the jam is hard, and writing anything is always a learning experience for next time. I think exploring the world further would be cool, considering the time and effort you put into imagining it, whether that be through Myles specifically or even like an anthology of shorter stories that happen in the same universe.

So I've never been to a con before, but I understand the feeling of the general premise. I joke with my friends that are "in the know" that Halloween is my favorite holiday because it's the one day per year where it's socially acceptable to be a furry in public, and it's the same kind of idea here - a brief period to express yourself in a way that's usually confined to the internet.

Regardless of experience with cons themselves, I think there's a lot to like here. The dialogue is snappy and really well written (most of the time - we'll get there) and despite being longer than the other entries I've read for this jam so far, this was a breeze to get through. There's also so much effort that clearly went into designing all the expressive, detailed sprites and the UI, and the music was all very fitting as well, including going above and beyond to include a break beat for (I think?) just the brief dance competition scene. Also, the default volume setting is 30%. Y'all are real ones for that.

While the writing style was great and engaging (had a few laugh out loud moments like "Rave me -> Unrave me" and "I'm hole!"), some of the directions the various plot threads took either fell flat for me, or in some cases, rubbed me the wrong way. 

Spoilers herein.

I think the easiest way for me to break down the issues I had with this one is to go day by day, but as an overarching theme to the criticism, while I don't have a problem with Swift not getting laid during the con (thematically, this seems to work into the idea that things rarely go as expected. I feel like everyone's had this sort of thing happen, if not at a con, then just at a party or something) and I don't think the VN needed porn for porn's sake, I did feel like I didn't quite buy the circumstances leading to each of Swift's blueballings. 

Day 1:

- Like I said, I've never been to a con, so if this was inspired by a real experience, fair play I guess, but I find it very hard to believe that even the most delusional of individuals would show up to a furry convention with confederate flag gear. Like even if you're oblivious to the irony, you at least have to be aware that it would drastically lower your odds of picking up someone there, which is clearly Diesel's goal. I think it would have felt a bit more natural and less jarring for Swift to just get weird vibes from him and back out. He's never had sex before, at least not with a guy (?), so it wouldn't be like outlandish that he'd be cautious about his first partner, and the termination of the encounter wouldn't seem so trite.

- Didn't really like Blake's comment the following morning of "what are you doing rolling the dice on rednecks in the South? You gotta be safer than that." and that it wasn't contested by the other characters or the game itself. Like just because someone looks or sounds "Southern" doesn't automatically make them a confederate flag flying bigot. Considering how much emphasis this game puts on the acceptance of diversity throughout the furry community, it didn't sit right with me to perpetuate harmful stereotypes about people just based on their appearance, accent, or state of residence. 

Day 2:

- While the broader reason for the encounter with Hammer falling through felt more believable than the others (i.e., married), I think the actual sequence leading up to that reveal was a little... convenient. I feel like it went that way more to tease the player than to actually be a plausible scenario. It could've been more natural for Swift to zone out when Hammer told him he was married, then go up to his room to find Sprocket already there and react accordingly. 

- Going to echo Caellam's criticisms of the Hammer bus dialogue. I know what the Pulse shooting was, I know how fucked up it was to paint over the crosswalk, and I know that 2025 has generally been a shitty year for being less than heteronormative in the US. You don't need to have a Wikipedia summary of the Pulse shooting or comments from Florida politicians to get that across. I am acutely aware. I know it likely came from a good place, but it came off really condescending.

Day 3:

- Osgood's turn from "shy and awkward but trying to have fun in his own way" to "actual terrible person" came way out of left field. Like, aside from how exaggerated that whole exchange was in general, I just do not buy that the guy who's been listening to Blake yap about wanting to get a train run on them by 10 guys for the past two days is slut-shaming Swift for... not hooking up with people. It just felt like drama for the sake of drama whereas the two of them trying but failing to have sex because both of them realizing they're just not into each other that way would have still fit the "nothing works out" theme while feeling more organic and not like actively annihilating their friendship. 

Other stuff:

- Caellam kinda mentioned this too, but it's a bit odd that this was submitted for Novembuck when the buck is in like... 15% of the VN and has absolutely no impact on any of the plots, other than bringing Swift to the rave and promptly disappearing. I know the requirement is basically just "there's a deer somewhere" so it still qualifies, but it was weird that the deer was barely even a side character.

- Fossa. I don't know what's going on with Fossa. I thought he'd come up at least some point in the story, but he really doesn't. They meet on the plane and then he completely disappears until the last like five lines of the VN. Why not keep talking to him on the way to the venue, or try to hang out at the con when the others were busy? Like, I get that the real reason was probably just to focus on the three main encounters, but the MFF invitation also feels out of nowhere because these two shared like, one conversation.

- I also don't know what the takeaway is really supposed to be from that ending? Like, I'd think it's supposed to be another chance to try a con and have it go better, but things went so miserable at this one that I'm genuinely not sure if Swift is going to have another bad time and not be friends with Fossa by the end of that one too.

- To end on a positive note, I think the stylistic decision to have a furry VN in the actual real world by having the protagonist intentionally OddTaxi the people around him was really clever. 

I know there were quite a few criticisms above, but as stated earlier, I still thought this was a fun, entertaining, and certainly well produced read. 

I'll give this 17 fursuits out of 3 Amicus dildos. 

I guess I could write a big long review for this like I do for most things, but, really it's not like it even matters, right? Why spend that effort when I could just click through the next VN on the list?

This was great. I loved it. 

Spoilers and such below. 

*

*

It's pretty clear where we're going from the opening scene (I actually made a note predicting that dad was dead, so I was like... halfway there), and while this type of thing isn't really new (see, e.g., Brave New World, We Happy Few) the delivery and conclusion are what sets this one apart. Generally in this type of story there's an attempt to break free from the artificial happiness, and while this attempt may be futile (like in Brave New World), there's some resistance to the Thing Which We Are To Consider Bad. 

We get a brief glimpse of this with Mrs. Hunter, and during Chappy's breakdown, but this VN responds to all that with just a truckload of nihilism, which, yeah, is probably how most people in that situation would respond. 

Presentation-wise, the cutesy style of the BF-addled world was well-realized (and well-suited for using simple assets that could be easily developed in the constraints of the jam) as was the shift in tone and soundscape after the illusion is broken. I did find some of the "normal" pair's interactions to be a bit over the top (knocking the bag out of Chappy's hands felt a bit too much like bullies from an 80s teen movie rather than what is essentially two well-off people gawking at a junkie on the street), but overall this was really effective. 

Official rating is 12 somas out of 10 joys. 

Okay so first off, judging by the sample screenshots provided I'm not sure what's supposed to be a spoiler or not, so I'm just going to give a general recommendation to passers by to read this, as they should for all the jam submissions, but also maybe to go in blind since piecing together how we get from the intro to present events in the first half was kinda fun. Spoilers from here on out though, so avoid 'em if you don't want 'em.

Presentation here is generally fine - assets are clearly limited from the jam constraints, but the sprites you have are used effectively and the music does the job. Definitely not overbearing or annoying at least. Obviously none of that applies once the "visual" part of the VN goes out the window at the end, but you're already aware of that. Jam deadlines happen and this one isn't being scored so I'm not going to fault you for anything. I'm glad you included the rest of the story even if the visuals weren't complete.

Moving on to the "novel" part of the project, the writing here is... a bit hit or miss for me. The action scenes are where you really shine - it really seems like you have a keen interest in these parts and I think you put a lot of effort into "choreographing" those scenes in a clear and well-paced way. I can also tell you put a lot of effort into the lore surrounding the wraiths, and while this much attention to detail is appreciated, it was also a lot to absorb for a story this relatively short. Going forward with other projects, it may be worth taking some time during drafting and revising to make sure you're focusing on the parts of the lore that are most relevant to the reader. 

As for everything between the action scenes and lore explanations, there's really not much there. It's mostly just Myles traveling from location to location, beating a monster, then more internal monologuing, the general tone of which is morose and melancholy in a way that feels like it's going for "Nordic noir" but occasionally veers a bit towards "edgy anime".  I think in order for this story to be stronger we need two things:

1) Myles needs an arc. I think there's an attempt at this with him saying he's happy to be alive at the end, but that doesn't really feel earned. If you zoom out, really all that's prompting him to say that is making small talk with another guy that cooked for him twice, both after he did variations of his ghost-stabbing job for him. There need to be more moments in the story to positively change Myles' perspective to reach that resolution, whether that be more interactions with Billy, or Thomas the nice operator guy, or something. 

2) More information about Mike. For a story that puts so much emphasis on memory and losing connections with your "humanity" (scare quotes because furries) there is practically nothing here about what Myles/Mike was like before he died. All we get is him having friends, immediately dying, waking up in a morgue, and getting his briefing from I Can't Believe It's Not SCP. So when Myles says Mike definitely wouldn't have approved of what he did to Grand, yeah we can take that at face value to some extent but we really don't have anything concrete to contrast Myles' current actions and personality against. 

There are a few more minor things here and there, like some weird grammar issues like "the" missing where it should have been there in many lines (not sure if this may have been translated from a language that doesn't use definite articles?), but I think I've yapped for long enough ^^". 

I give this one 15 Nazgul out of 7 Covenant Wraith main battle tanks.