itch.io

I have gone on record in other May Wolf reviews as saying that I love isekai and… yeah this is a really really fun iteration on the genre. From the many backgrounds with their radiant sky colors, to the various twists on real life technology, to the reveal of what Lou’s been up to the whole time - the spirit world doesn’t just feel like a pastiche of the genre, parodying the lack of language gap in them, but also like a proper acknowledgement of its strengths - which I love!

In general, I think that, past the plot, this story does a great job of conveying interlingual communication and the general experience of being abroad without the conveniences of modern life - there’s just something about connecting with people in spite of the language barrier - whether that be through food, music, or even just broken repetition of the few words you do understand - that just feels nice, you know? And I feel like this VN captures that really well.

That does, however, tie into one of the more mixed aspects of the VN - that being the conlang and its implementation within it. I’ll back what everyone else said about how impressive it is to have put in all that work, but at the same time, it does add a lot of empty noise to the VN - at least during an initial reading. While it’s fun to go back to the beginning scenes with the knowledge of the ‘twist’ and to see it represented in what people are saying, and it’s fun to see how the various characters slowly but surely learn the language to close the gap - it also winds up getting in the way of enjoying the story by taking away from the emotions of many of the scenes. At the end of the day, it’s hard to focus on the more dramatic scenes when they’re interspersed with what is, effectively, gibberish for the average reader.

The conlang dictionary is certainly cool, but, by its own admission, using it is not the intended experience - since it takes away from the experience of actually reading the visual novel and turns it into something far different.

That said, this is far from a serious story - and I don’t think it’s all that much of a problem for the few more serious scenes to be marred by the conlang stuff when the rest both make good use of it and are quite irreverent in tone. I might have said something else if the ending was more fleshed out, but as is, it feels like the tone of the story is quite consistent. That said, I do think the ending’s brevity is a weakpoint here - as though, once the dramatic sports match is over, we simply go through the motions to close things out, rather than lingering on the emotions of the characters - specifically those of Kameron’s, who makes the difficult choice of leaving in a way that feels far too sudden. I don’t entirely buy his claim for why he wants to leave - it feels like he’s lying to himself. That said, I do feel as though the story made the underlying feelings clear enough - but it still feels somewhat… arbitrary, in a way.

But then again, maybe that’s part of the point - at the end of the day, while the ending is quite sudden, Riley’s declaration at the end really does say it all - with or without the language barrier, whether on earth or in the spirit realm, he and Kameron love each other, and that’s what matters. It’s brief, simple, and still manages to get everything we need to know across. The meatbrained wolf who tried to cheat his way to power, now giving up on that same power after earning it fairly, in order to be with the one he loves.

In a jam full of DND-related stories, The Tale of Drac de Na Coca surprises by… not being that, in spite of really, really feeling as though it ought to be. More than anything, the first half of this feels like a DND campaign to me - the meandering over seemingly pointless conversations, the traditional party composition, and the very blatant eldritch blast references. Honestly, when the story got to the more serious bits, I found myself getting somewhat surprised by the lethality of it all, given just how decidedly non-lethal DND tends to be what with the omnipresence of healers and whatnot.

The first half is slow, and it feels somewhat in conflict with the more grim latter half, but I can certainly buy it as a representations of the characters sort of ‘repressing’ anxieties relating to the looming disaster of the fight with the dragon. And I think it does do a good job of representing that disaster - both in the leadup at the camp, and during the moment-to-moment action of it all. At the end of the day, after spending a good couple thousand words getting to know these characters, it certainly does feel sad to see what occurs - even in the happier endings.

That said, I do think the beginning half is the story’s weaker half - it feels like a somewhat arbitrary collection of conversations - you get the conversation to introduce the MC, then the scene to introduce the My Wolf, then the rest of the party members, etc… The flashbacks felt especially out of place, and I’m ultimately left wondering if a more natural way of providing these introductions could have helped bridge the gap between the story’s two halves - to provide more hints towards the impending doom of the characters, or maybe to better introduce the ‘secondary adventurers’ who show up in all of the endings.

Speaking of endings - I really liked them all! Both the ‘bad’ ending and both good(ish) endings were quite effective (though I’ll admit that I didn’t really understand how the choice of sticking with the bard mattered all that much in the grand scheme of things given what was going on), to the point where I felt compelled to check out all three - and I greatly enjoyed doing so. At the end of the day though, I’m still left with the feeling that if both halves of this story were better bridged together, then it could have been even better.

I don’t really have too much to say about this one, honestly - the art is fantastic (every time an entry has detailed, hand-drawn backgrounds, an angel gets its wings), the plot is very basic, and the custom engine is kind of irritating to play with given just how much quality of life Renpy has built in which this one lacks (the thing that personally hurt me most to lose was the lack of text speed controls, or the ability to speed past the text animations by pressing space / clicking).

I’d have liked to maybe see more art in the sex scene given that there’s quite a bit of asset reuse there, but given the sheer amount of assets elsewhere it is understandable - it just winds up feeling a bit odd though, because the sex scene seems to be the bit of the story with the most focus. I still liked it a lot though, so it did its job well.

This one’s interesting - it sets out to convey a very down-to-earth sort of vibe in a way that I really relate to, but I feel as though some elements of the presentation and writing wind up harming the story.

First up is the obvious matter of the audio - I feel as though a more fleshed-out soundscape could really help expand on the setting and make it feel more real - moreso than any other jam game, I really felt the lack of sound effects, music, and ambient noises here.

Secondly, while I think the writing gets across the sense of these characters knowing each other well and having a natural chemistry with each other, I do think it struggles a bit at making sure that the reader feels included in i. It’s a bit hard to explain, but it feels like someone telling a story of what happened, rather than us getting to see it directly - there’s no pauses in dialogue during the banter, no moments of contemplation or of them struggling to put together their next statement - it’s all just a nonstop stream of bits and inside jokes without much description as to what occurs between them.

To give an example, I’ll take the scene of Shiloh meeting up with Liam in the break room in the beginning of the game. The two meet in the crowded break room, dap up, make some small talk, and then Shiloh makes a fool of himself by making a loud alarm clock noise before Liam jokes about tollers getting a weird rep. The problem here is that the crux of the joke - Shiloh making a ton of noise, followed by deafening silence - isn’t delivered in a way that connects with the reader all that much. I’d say this is mostly in the pacing of the writing.

I feel like visual novels have a natural pacing to them - a character says a line, the reader clicks forward to move to the next line, and so on. Each sentence, each click, can be seen as a ‘unit of time’ - similar to seconds in a TV show, or panels in a comic. If a scene is of importance, you’ll want to linger on it, or to do something else to highlight said importance. Here, however, the ‘climax’ of the joke - Shiloh making the absurd noise - is relegated to one half of a ‘unit of time’ by taking up half of a sentence that starts out seemingly casually, and the aftermath is a very simple and very nondescript line - “Everyone in the break room stares at Shiloh.”

I think that, pacing things out better (breaking up shiloh’s joke into multiple lines similar to how a joke would naturally be paced, or fleshing out the description of the silence slightly or describing the new people’s expressions, etc) could have helped slightly here. Likewise, I think sound effects could also help with indicating the pacing of things better (for example, by cutting out the music during the line that’s meant to represent an “awkward silence”).

All of that said, this is just my personal opinion - and I’m certainly not an expert on this stuff, so forgive me if this all just sounded like nonsense. Properly conveying this type of realism is a really difficult thing to do in the medium of visual novels, and I think that even with the flaws I mentioned the VN does a fantastic job of it - both in how the characters speak, and with the broader connection to workplace stories and ‘folklore’ that comes from a very real place.

I haven’t mentioned the art, but it’s also great - there’s a lot of sprite variations, and though the sprites veer towards being slightly meme-y at times, they do a lot to showcase the various characters’ personalities (maybe this is me reading a bit too into things, but the fact that Greyson’s expressions are just as absurd as Liam / Shiloh / Brooke’s expressions tells me everything I need to know about how well he’ll fit in with those three).

I also really liked (read: groaned at) Liam’s repeated attempts at self-sabotaging his potential relationship with Greyson (and was very thankful for his friends’ wingman skills). There’s a lot to like here - and I think this VN manages to do a very tricky thing quite well, which I really appreciate it for. I’m really excited to see what else you put out!

Before I get into my criticisms, I do want to make it clear that I’m really, really excited for Engil’s route and the conclusion of this story. A lot of interesting ideas are raised and explored here, but this feels like the type of story where every single route contributes a lot to the overarching narrative - and having only two of three available right now still leaves things somewhat confusing (in particular, with regards to fleshing Engil out).

That said, I think my enjoyment of the story was in spite of its current state, rather than as a result of it. The sprites and CGs are certainly beautiful (I love your style so much honestly everyone looks so so good!!!), but the two available routes kind of fall apart visually as they reach the end, neglecting to even swap out backgrounds or to show multiple characters on-screen at the same time after a certain point.

Proofreading was also quite the issue here - with the later sections of the routes frequently leaving me confused due to key words in sentences being misspelled, and certain repeat occurrences such as characters saying “yea” instead of “yeah” which took me out of the experience. Oddly enough, I felt as though the earlier parts of the story had a run-on-sentence problem, but that faded away after a bit.

With all that said though, with regards to the story itself, I really did enjoy this a lot - the story tackles a lot of very intense subjects, but it feels as though they all wind up returning to the central themes of sin and absolution, on both a personal and a communal scale - which helps bring everything together quite well (and is part of why I’m very excited for Engil’s route - because I want to see how that will evolve on these central themes).

It’s the type of advantage that only route-focused visual novels have - each route having its own central ideas and focuses that still all add up to one central ‘thesis statement’ that it’s making - and I think this visual novel does it very well. That said, I did feel as though the route select choice was a bit… arbitrary? It kind of felt like the story decided to arbitrarily split off at some point, and every character who wasn’t the ‘route character’ kinda disappeared into the aether the moment the route selection choice was made. Engil’s the one exception to that - but his route isn’t available yet.

While not a deal-breaker, that is kind of a shame in my opinion - because I feel as though there is a lot of interesting stuff to be mined from seeing how the route characters interact with one another past the intro of the game - especially once the stakes become more extreme. Solis, Lillia, and Engil all feel very well-realized to me, and as though they would have a lot to talk about once they let down their guard a bit more - which is part of why the disappearance of the other characters after the route selection was a bit disappointing to me.

That said, I did really enjoy what is there - and, like I said, I feel as though Engil’s route is very likely to be the final ‘missing piece’ to this story, so I’m very interested in seeing what it’ll be like!

I must admit, whenever I see a half-completed VN show up for a game jam, I do feel kinda weird about it - especially when it’s very clearly the lead-in to a much bigger project, rather than something that just couldn’t come together in time due to time constraints. That said, in spite of my apprehensions, My Tainted Life made great use of the limited runtime, and certainly didn’t leave me feeling as though it was only half-complete. While being the opener to a longer story, it manages to tell a self-contained narrative that sells the reader on its merits, like all good ‘pilot episodes’ should.

The standout to me here is the art - to put it bluntly, it’s incredible - the sprites are great-looking, and the CGs capture the emotions of the scenes very well - but I think the backgrounds are the absolute highlight here. They’re at once vibrant and detailed, with a beautiful, slightly messy style that really brings the world to life. Each and every one of them would make for a fantastic wallpaper, and I really think they help elevate the story in a way that ought to be praised - they make this feel like a proper fantasy world.

With that said, I can’t help but feel as though the way it’s all put together in the VN itself is slightly lacking - the sprites are just a bit too static at times, and the CGs pass by without letting the reader properly soak them in. I think using transformations to move the sprites around a bit (especially in action scenes) could have helped the story quite a bit, and I also think it would have been fine for the CGs to linger a bit more, even if they don’t describe what the characters are doing 1:1 - I’d rather see that than have another action scene where the characters are standing frozen in place.

The music also felt slightly off to me. The tracks themselves are wonderfully made, but taking a look at the files, I can’t help but notice that they’re all 30 second tracks, made to loop (and the actual loops seem to be quite a bit shorter than those 30 seconds, even - with them repeating within those 30 seconds as well). I definitely understand how making all of these custom tracks in such a limited time is hard (and like I said, the tracks themselves are really well made), but, to be frank - I had to mute it after a certain point. As lush and detailed as they sound, even the calm tracks are loud and energetic enough that I became all-too-aware of the loops quite quickly. It especially stands out with the track that plays during fight scenes (Fighting.mp3), which was the one that made me have to mute the game due to how grating it got.

Again, I really appreciate the effort put into adding custom music to the game, and the music is technically really well made - I just think that loops that are so short are a poor fit for a visual novel where one is expected to listen to them for so long.

Story-wise, meanwhile, I enjoyed it quite a bit! The scene with Korpa at the start felt a bit unnecessary to me (presumably because it’s setting things up for later in the visual novel), but I actually really liked the dynamic between Frey and Chris - and I’m quite interested in seeing how it evolves over the course of the story. I also really enjoyed the fact that, even though this is only the first build of many, this does feel like a proper story - one with a beginning, middle, and end that leaves the readers satisfied. Quite a lot happens in this one, and it kept me entertained all throughout.

So, in summary… some presentation issues aside, this one’s great! I’d recommend it to anyone who’s looking for a proper fantasy VN, and due to how complete it feels, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it even if it is only the first build!

I think this one’s interesting, but I can’t help but feel as though, in spite of being surprisingly long (at 7k words), there just isn’t much here for me to talk about.

This feels to me like a matter of scope, really - we start with a detailed explanation of a specific piece of the world’s folklore, before running through what feels like the whole life story of both of our MCs - we meet them at three different stages in their growth, but I’m honestly left questioning if that much was even necessary.

I think that, in storytelling, what you choose not to say is just as important as what you do choose to say - and while I certainly understand the desire to write everything that you have in mind to make sure the readers understand it as best as possible (and it’s something I’m quite guilty of as well), learning to pare things down to make the story more engaging for the readers is an incredibly important skill.

As is, I feel as though the sections of the characters in their youths just aren’t all that necessary - the titular Rain of Feathers was interesting, but I think it could have been showcased while the characters were older as well. There isn’t all that much new information that’s told in these sections - it feels as though we’re learning the same things over and over again, rather than getting to the meat of the story.

What makes this most relevant though is the matter of artwork. As is, we have very limited sprites for the characters - and most of them are of their younger versions, leaving the older sprites quite static, and without varied expressions and poses.

The reason I’m mentioning this is because, by your own admission, you ran out of time while working on the art - which certainly makes sense! Game jams are incredibly hard, and it’s easy to run out of time while working on them (especially when you’re doing everything solo), but that’s why the most important skill for working on a project is figuring out how to make things easier for yourself in the planning phase.

When you’re a solo dev, it’s easy to fall into the trap of underestimating just how much work you’ll have to do - which is why you have to plan from the getgo to figure out what is or isn’t necessary. While this might change with the latter half of the story, I’m ultimately given the impression that the ‘childhood’ parts of the story, and to a lesser extent (though I still enjoyed them quite a bit) the many illustrations of the folklore reading, didn’t really add to the main story you’re trying to tell, and left those sections of the VN somewhat lacking.

I do want to commend the art though, because it is quite nice - while limited, the sprites are cute - and I’ve already mentioned my enjoyment of the folklore scene. That said, it’s a shame that I don’t have much else to say about this game due to the little that happens in the story. As is, we leave off just as things start to get more interesting, which is a bummer, especially when it felt to me like we could have had a version of this story that got to the point much quicker without losing much in the process.

It’s hard for me to comment on the story here given that this is still unfinished - the story is interesting and promising, and it does what it sets out to do well, but I can’t really say whether it’s good or not until we see where it leads - especially with how this does seem like it’ll ultimately be a short story.

What I can do is commend a variety of things that I think this VN does well - first up, the music! I thought it was really nice, and worked well to set the mood. Character-wise, I think Ren is a great example of a character who’s very enthralling - you know dealing with them is a bad idea, but you can’t help but be intrigued by them. I think their sprite also contributes to this a ton - at first I was confused slightly by just how dark their fur is, because it makes it hard to really tell what their pose is, but it really contributes to the idea that they’re this sort of… deep, endless abyss that Lucan can’t help but be drawn into.

But, like I said… it’s hard to tell where it’ll go, at this stage. Especially with a story like this, it feels like a lot hinges on the ending - and even for an unfinished game, it feels like this one leaves at quite an unsatisfying point (in part because what we do have is so good). As such, I’ll have to wait before giving a verdict on this story - but know that I did really enjoy what is here!

This one was great! I think it tells a compelling story about a kid stuck in a very, very bad situation, with just the right amount of detail to really make it hit. I also really appreciated the use of limited color palettes to make the backgrounds stand out - it helped give each background a different ‘personality’ and made individual scenes stand out from each other well.

If there’s one big weakness here, I’d say it’s the story’s brevity - while Mary’s tendency to dissociate no doubt plays part in it, I found myself confused about what was going on quite a few times - in particular, both endings felt as though they just suddenly cut off after a certain point - and while it makes sense for the ‘bad’ ending, I was quite confused when I checked out the good one and saw its seemingly arbitrary cutoff point in the middle of a conversation.

In general, I think things could also be paced out a bit more - this is a very fast paced story, but I think a few moments of relative quiet and contemplation could help the viewers better sit with the intense emotions the characters are feeling. This doesn’t necessarily need to be by splicing scenes into the existing work, either - even splitting up certain sentences into multiple ones, or adding a few more descriptions of expressions and behaviors, can go a long way towards helping with that.

With all that said though, the central story was incredibly compelling for me, especially since it’s the kind of thing that you rarely see in the FVN space. Great job!

So, I do want to open up with something that kind of irritated me regarding the game - admittedly, it’s kind of a me issue, but the combo of the custom UI not allowing for rollback via mouse wheel, there not being a history page (at least that I could find), and the very liberal usage of text timing and auto-advance made this really hard for me to read. Those can help create atmosphere and dictate the pacing of the work - but it operates under the assumption that the pacing which the author dictates is the pacing readers feel comfortable with. Personally, I tend to jump back and forth quite a lot while reading in order to better understand it / pick up on specific details, and I found myself kind of lost a lot of the time due to the combination of all of these aspects (though admittedly, I also just didn’t find the back button for a while because of the new UI).

That aside, I did eventually manage to overcome those issues and read through the story. Contrary to what some of the other reviewers said, I think Otsoa and the conversations with him were probably the highlight for me. When the MC was alone, the prose was pretty, but kind of hard to follow - it felt as though the same ideas were repeated over and over again to emphasize certain points, but they wound up overstaying their welcome somewhat.

Meanwhile, the conversations with Otsoa managed to genuinely develop the characters quite well - I started out irritated at the wolf and his standoffish personality, but gradually grew to understand both him and the MC better through their conversations. By the end of the story, I was genuinely sad at how things shook out - for as opposed as their desires might have seemed to Otsoa at first, they really do come from the same place of wanting something they can never have. This might just be me having come from reading The Leveret Spirit before this, but I saw the phones as representative of the internet and how it can bridge people from vastly different origins together - and of the trials and tribulations of those types of conversations.

The mystery of the phones connecting between the two was also quite intriguing - why did they suddenly appear? How the hell do they work? And, most of all, why is it that the MC can suddenly understand the other sea creatures? This all lingers in the background, but it’s developed quite well across the work - with the final action scene in particular serving to both give the reveal of “something bigger is happening here” due to the MC’s sudden grasp of the new language (which also contextualizes some previous oddities better), and provide a good climax to the work.

The one problem with the Otsoa sections is the lack of visuals - I imagine it’s in part because of jam constraints, but they have no visuals - Otsoa is a wolf only by name, because we don’t even know what he looks like. I feel as though it wouldn’t have been too far of a stretch for there to be some sort of video call, given how the phones are already quite “magical” in their function - though I do understand that it might not fit in with the author’s vision for the story to be based around solitude.

All of that is to say that I think this is an interesting work, even if I think there’s room for improvement. I do think it’s mostly a matter of taste, though - my own personal tastes are such that I didn’t particularly connect with the solo sections, but if someone’s looking for a moody and atmospheric read that’s well-made, I’d definitely recommend it.

At times, The Leveret Spirit… doesn’t feel like a particularly serious work. It’s a snapshot of a time from only 15 years ago, but of a very different internet, centering around a very specific sort of online community / friend group that has long since disappeared - and of how, in spite of the supposed lightheartedness of these online relationships (and of the way this work portrays them at first), the emotions behind them are very much real, and things can quickly spiral out of control.

After all, online worlds make it that much easier to hide the real emotions behind the screen - people put on acts and pretend their problems aren’t as serious as they are, and no one can really call them out on it because interpersonal communication is so much more limited over this medium. When dealing with static avatars, subtle expressions and gestures are replaced with a combination of preset moves - emotes, kaomoji, text formatting, and even some silly manipulations of one’s in-game avatar which communities agree mean certain things (while it doesn’t show up in this VN, something that comes to mind is repeated use of crouching/pressing the shift key as either showing friendliness, or as ‘teabagging’ one’s opponents).

Now, the reason I just ranted about this for two paragraphs is because I think it’s this specific form of online interaction and relationship which The Leveret Spirit manages to get across really well - through a mixture of clever presentation tricks and sprite animations, it bring back memories to anyone who’s been there in these types of old online communities - or who’s been even remotely adjacent to them. It’s really good stuff.

I do think the VN does ‘shoot itself in the foot’ at times, so to speak, by swapping between these sorts of rigid game-ified interactions for a far more traditional format - you’ll read a sentence about the MC expressing an emotion via an emote, before the narration suddenly swaps out as though the MC was really experiencing the scene - right down to characters’ subtle gestures and movements which could never really be seen within game. While I understand the desire for more traditional prose and descriptions of character emotions at times, I think it ultimately does a disservice to the game’s ability to capture online interactions and cheapens them somewhat.

It might be tricky to write these sorts of interactions in a compelling manner and to have them make up the bulk of the character actions, but the writing on display here is strong enough that I do think the team has the ability to make it work.

I haven’t talked much about the plot much yet, but I did enjoy it quite a bit - the characters are both realistic and relatable, and by the time the interpersonal drama came along I genuinely wasn’t sure who to side with - it’s one of those situations where no one’s really in the right, and everyone sucks in different regards - but the one thing for sure is that both characters come out of it hurting, which makes for the best type of character drama.

That said, I think the overarching narrative of the secret quest is a bit weaker, specifically because it felt quite a bit less believable than everything else. It’s still solid, and I like the idea of the rogue dev keeping it in in spite of it being controversial, but it all feels a bit arbitrary, and as though it’d have been discovered only a few weeks after the game released, rather than only a few months before its shutdown. That said, it’s far from a serious problem, and I think the way the story elegantly handles the online relationships involved with all of their nuances more than makes up for it.

Oh and the art is awesome. I forgot to mention it but it’s really really good. Great work!

This one’s interesting - I think it’s got a lot of potential, and dabbles in some very interesting ideas, but I can’t help but feel as though it could have gone further. I’m not going to say that I think the story ought to have been different - I think there’s room for stories that are more “low-key”, and I think this is a good example of a story just like that which manages to be interesting in spite of it, but at the same time, I feel like there’s an underlying ‘darkness’ to the story which would have also been very interesting to explore further.

This specifically pertains to William’s character - he’s the highlight of this story for me, and I left the story hungry to see more of him. He starts out seeming like a somewhat ‘normal’ husband, only for you to effectively realize that he’s been more or less sold off by his family for the sake of a folklore about bringing luck to whoever marries him. The folklore, the fact that his family didn’t even bother to clarify that he’s a man, and even the fact that it doesn’t seem as though he’s ever believed he’d be able to achieve the dreams which Brock fears he stole from him… all of that is ultimately left as background noise to a far more mundane tale about tradition bringing the newly married couple together. Honestly, rather than feeling like the couple were going to be happy from here on out, I mostly came out of this story thinking that William really ought to get some therapy because it sure does seem like it could help him out.

There’s also the possibility that I’m off with this interpretation - at the end of the day, the story keeps most of this quite vague and up to interpretation, but it does tie back to a sort of disconnect that’s present here - the implied darkness of William’s background is quite a far cry from how casual the story otherwise is about it.

Then again, I do think that it ultimately is a strength - while I might be left wanting for more at times, it provides a lot of interest and texture to what is otherwise a simple story. The situation the two characters find themselves in is undoubtedly wrong, and neither seems entirely happy with it, but there’s something uplifting about how they manage to make the most of it regardless.

This VN is incredibly unique, and I’ll have to agree with everyone else in that it’s very well-made technically - I think NVL mode is used well here, the UI and “filled in” sprites look great, and the music is incredibly pleasant to listen to. In general, this is quite a fun read.

I’ll also have to commend the VN on introducing me to Los Motivos del Lobo - I’m not christian, and I don’t have particularly fond feelings regarding Christianity, but it’s a pretty damn good poem, and I wouldn’t have learned of it without reading this.

In practice, the VN functions as an extended version of the poem, swapping out verses for the structure of a traditional novel, and with a new framing device to tie it all together - but I feel as though the VN’s additions wind up making the impact of it all dimish somewhat, without adding enough to bolster it in place of what the poem had to offer.

The main element that stands out to me is with the decision to turn the wolf into a more humanlike figure - within the poem, the wolf is pure - untainted by humanity - and Francis’ taming of the wolf and its integration into society is its first exposure to humanity and the village’s sins. The wolf functions as a foil to the humans of the village - its natural instincts to hunt, devour, and terrorize the village (which is something that is absent from this work - the wolf in the poem killed a whole lot of people) are shown to be no more evil than the sins of humanity - which is why it eventually chooses to abandon them and return to nature.

Within the VN, however, the wolf is, effectively, human as well. Someone from a different, mysterious culture - and someone who is perhaps even more of an outsider than a wolf would be, given how an ordinary wolf could just be considered a dog - but a human nonetheless. The story becomes one about a queer foreigner converting to Christianity and eventually being ostracized from the village due to his stricter adhesion to its rules than the rest of the villagers.

Of course, this criticism operates under the (presumably incorrect) assumption that the VN wants to just adapt the poem - but, at least in my eyes, it also doesn’t vary things up enough to make its changes and additions work well. It feels as though, in spite of expanding on the original, the story mostly adheres to it in tone - and its additions don’t flesh it out, as much as they just change the format of the narrative.

This forms a sort of dissonance - where the narrative of the original and the narrative formed by the changes to the story clash, neither really reaching their full potential due to both ‘opposing’ one another - after all, the wolf in this VN can’t exactly represent the ambivalent violence inherent to nature when he’s so humanized and his sins are ‘sanded down’, just as the wolf in the original poem can’t be seen as representative of foreigners without it coming off as incredibly offensive.

I’ll also mention that, in spite of me focusing so much on the ‘twist’ at the end - the VN actually puts far less of an emphasis on the ending than Los Motivos del Lobo does. In the poem, the narrative of the wolf abandoning the village takes up almost a third of the work - whereas here it feels more like an after-credits scene - one final twist for us to keep in mind after the pair’s emotional farewell. I feel as though this could have certainly benefited from putting more focus on that scene, or on changing how it happened… but at the end of the day, that’s just my opinion, and I can also see how that might not align with the creator’s intentions.

Ultimately though, like I said… this is just my opinion, and I certainly don’t want to downplay the incredible work that went into actually putting this all together. This VN is incredibly well put together technically, and is still an enjoyable read - I’d definitely recommend people read it, even if just to see a new unique take on how to present a visual novel. It’s just that it I ultimately didn’t really connect with it all that much as a result of the changes made to the original work (and, no doubt, due to some of my own personal feelings regarding Christianity. At the end of the day, I find the parts inspired by Los Motivos del Lobo far more interesting than the more straightforward tale of St. Francis and the Wolf of Gubbio - which is why I focused more on it and why I was disappointed to see how little focus was placed on it comparatively).

To briefly do a more 'traditional' review before I get to the stuff I actually want to talk about - at the end of the day, I think there's some flaws with the VN's presentation - the art style is consistent but hard to parse, the constantly pausing and shifting dialogue was sometimes hard to get through. This is specifically referring to the effect of characters pausing mid-sentence, not to the actual writing - the writing's really good, though the tone of the characters and their ways of speaking felt inconsistent from sentence to sentence which made it a bit rough at times. In general, I feel as though the presentation ultimately does the story here a disservice by making the VN a bit harder to get through than it should be - because I actually really really enjoyed the story here.

Now, in lieu of talking about the specifics... I just kinda want to share my interpretation of this story, because it's interesting and makes me want to talk about it and my interpretation of things (which might be wrong in places, but I feel as though it's better to share it than not to at risk of being wrong).

That said, I do want to give a warning and say that I think this story is best experienced blind, so to anyone reading this who hasn't played it, I'd recommend doing that first.

To me, Clam Story feels like a story about gods - both in the very literal sense of 'godhood' as an extradimensional being of a higher status messing with the world, and in the more metaphorical sense wherein one is in control of their own life and way of viewing the universe. Cheery has been toyed with endlessly by gods, has lost any and all sense of self, but within a world so devoid of everything - of culture, of people, of anything but the vastness of the ocean (which itself will soon disappear as the world 'ends' and Cheery dies) - they effectively become a god as well.

Much like how the god of leaves toyed with mortals endlessly in their pursuit of conquest, Cheery finds himself toying with Leeroy as well - in his endless pursuit of keeping the wolf from eating the clam, an act which will inevitably end the world by ending Cheery's own 'fantasy' of godhood. But... it's not as though said 'fantasy' is worthless - in the various loops that occur, we see a variety of possible ways in which things could shake out - Cheery could be crass, kind, to-the-point, omnicidal... and in viewing Cheery's shifting emotions, we get a glimpse into why the god of leaves might have acted the way they did - after all, what importance do the lives of mortals have to gods? What importance does Leeroy's life really hold to Cheery, when they will inevitably find themselves back on that beach after the world ends again?

Well, it's not like Cheery was all that happy when they were being an asshole to Leeroy, right? So why not be kind? Why not celebrate Leeroy's 'birthday', and make Cheery's own last few moments before death as kind as they could be by showering Leeroy with gifts and enjoying the little time Cheery has in spite of the pain of existing? In spite of their own failing bodies?

Or at least, that's the conclusion I came to from reading this. I do think there's also a lot to be said about Leeroy being a standin for humanity as a whole - a being so caught up in momentary pleasures and desires that they can't help but kill themselves due to eating the clam. That said, I've rambled enough already, so I'll leave it at that.

In conclusion, in spite of all I said - Clam Story did get me rambling a whole lot - and it made me give a spoiler warning so that people reading it will be encouraged to experience it for themselves, so... great stuff!

It's kind of hard to comment on this one because there just isn't much here - it's quite impressive that this much was made in only a week, but these types of "empty" first builds certainly leave me wanting for more. What we have is pretty neat, though - I think the strongest part is the presentation. The art is stylized and appealing to look at, the sprites and their various expressions ensure that the visuals don't get boring, and the music was solid all around.

Plot-wise, I'll restate that there just isn't much to say - other comments have mentioned that the story could probably stand to be more economical with its scenes, figuring out how to more elegantly present various aspects of the world rather than just expositing them directly in a dialogue scene, but I feel like that's only really an issue because of how little information we do get in this build.

A large part of Isekai's appeal as a genre is in showcasing a whole new world to the reader, and VNs compound on that by adding a visual element to things, but the information we get here is only delivered via dialogue - we don't really get to see anything magical for ourselves, save for Wage's magic sword and the MC's reincarnation - and this lack of information makes the story feel lacking. When reading an isekai story, I'm curious about the world - what life is like in it and how it differs from earth, how the magic feels to use in action sequences, how the MC copes with their new scenario - but by having such a short build which goes so little into these things, I'm mostly just left feeling empty.

That said... I have a soft spot for isekai, and this one definitely feels promising. Like I said, the presentation here is strong - and I think that putting more effort into properly showcasing this fantasy world via the artwork and storytelling, now that you're not bound by the limitations of the jam, could really help elevate this story further. So while there isn't much here currently, I'm definitely going to keep an eye on this work to see what comes of it!

Thank you for the fantastic review! 

This one definitely struggled slightly under the weight of the story's own scale - with Mitch's internal conflict of choosing whether to abandon his humanity or not, the interpersonal conflict of Mitch not acknowledging his own privilege as a man in a patriarchal society, and the external conflict of the weight placed upon Mitch and Birdy by the village are all occurring at once, I knew I couldn't do them all justice within the word limit of the game jam (and the month I had to work on the game) - ultimately I elected to leave the latter conflict as an 'unknown' for the future, rather than halfheartedly including it, given that the main goal of the story was to explore the former two and the callousness inherent to the fantasy of 'leaving it all behind' like Mitch desired.

The heavy-handedness was also something I was tweaking right up until I released the VN - I definitely agree that the story wound up being a bit too explicit about its folklore-related themes (mainly out of an anxiety that people wouldn't pick up on them and would think that it started and ended at werewolves being there). It's something I've definitely got on the mind for the eventual post-jam patch.

Though I will have to nitpick a bit and say that Mitch never described something as being hit by a bus, he just used the term 'throw under the bus' in a sentence, even if I do agree with you on the matter of the language used being too modern as a whole.

This one was a really effective horror story! Starting with the more subtle horror of having to do as the corrupt soldiers say, before things shift to a more supernatural horror - Jorge getting caught up in the karmic justice delivered to Damasceno, and not really being able to make heads or tails of the symbolic events of the night. 

I also really want to commend both the CGs and the backgrounds - the CGs are absolutely beautiful and help set the scene well, but the backgrounds do a fantastic job of making the setting of the Forensic Medical Institute feel real and accompanying the story.  The sprites are also quite expressive, but I'll admit that they felt a bit too static for my liking - with each sprite only having two expressions, and characters feeling quite static.

Speaking of, it does feel like the characters took somewhat of a backseat here - while Jorge and Michelle are the main characters here, and make for the framing device, the story of the autopsy and all that surrounds it doesn't really feel like their story - it feels like it could have happened to just about anyone, and they were just there by coincidence. Them being observers to the supernatural occurrences isn't necessarily bad, but I do feel as though we're missing some kind of unique perspective that would make this uniquely 'their' story. 

There's also the matter of the rapidly-shifting textboxes and the somewhat lackluster soundscape, but those have been raised in other reviews, so I won't linger on them for too long.

In spite of that, I do think that this is quite the interesting game - on top of the effective horror sequences, it tells a story about a time period that is both underexplored and fascinating, and I did enjoy the framing device of the two characters reminiscing from long in the future - the karmic justice of the past mirroring the hope for future real justice after the shift in rule. 

I Will Haunt You is very a very visually striking piece of work - from the varied presentation of sprites and CGs (I really enjoyed the floating effect on beckett), the smart use of music, and even the design of the main menu and the Itch page. The story is also quite interesting - a take on the various stages of grief, told in a branching manner through the perspective of the ghost. However, in spite of its strong visuals, I feel as though it has a tendency to tell rather than show, which winds up bogging it down somewhat.

(Almost) the whole story is told through what is, effectively, a set of monologues - Beckett directly expositing to the reader his thoughts and feelings, how he got here, and how he feels about every single thing that occurs in the story. This isn't necessarily a problem - but I can't help but feel as though the writing of the story doesn't make use of the medium's strengths and ability to showcase a person's innermost thoughts in all their messy glory - they're very matter-of-fact, which wound up making them feel too direct and to-the-point to me - to give an example, when Beckett complains about Rhett's date making spaghetti with him and claims that it's their dish, it doesn't feel particularly convincing, because we don't know enough about the context surrounding it to understand how much it means to Beckett - the incredibly complex and personal emotion of grief is flattened into vague statements, and we just have to take Beckett at his word to tell what he's feeling.

That said, I still thought the broad strokes of the story were enjoyable - and the game's striking visual direction and animations certainly helped raise things up a notch! Good job!

This has definitely got to be a first - not only is this game delivered in a cg-only style, but it's got animations! Actual proper animations that advance the story on their own, rather than just being there to supplement it! I can only imagine how much work it was to do it all given the jam's limitations, and given how intensive animation is as a medium (and the sheer amount of animations in here!)

And those animations are used to tell a really interesting story! I feel as though it's just the right level of abstract and 'weird' to really leave me thinking about the central supernatural mystery - the moment I finished it, I was instantly hit with the urge to replay it to try and wrap my head around it better than before - the initial read had me picking up on some stuff, but I can tell that future revisits will only help improve this story and flesh it out further.

 I do think there's some flaws keeping it from reaching greatness, though - the writing feels a bit too dry or 'flat' at times, and, most importantly (and as has been mentioned by others), the lack of audio really does this story a disservice. The repeating music and ambient noises make for a somewhat monotonous reading experience which clashes pretty heavily with the action-packed second half, in my eyes. Frequently, it meant that rather than being engrossed during the peak of the story, I was just left kind of confused by the dissonance between the visuals and the audio track - I think that sound effects timed to the animations and more background tracks could go a long way towards building on the ambience the story sets up.

Which isn't to say that this isn't worth reading, though - like I said, I'm already planning on revisiting this later to see if I can parse more from the plot, and I think that the way the story is delivered is unlike anything else - fantastic job!

This one's a great entry, albeit one that falters underneath its own ambition - I enjoyed the implementation of the gameplay here, and the UI is surprisingly slick and intuitive, but it does feel like the game's disparate elements never really 'clicked' together properly to me. The gameplay scenes felt somewhat arbitrary - the 'clues' and 'profiles' systems never really felt clear to me, and frequently the resulting conversations from them felt like they could have been part of a normal conversation tree rather than part of them - especially since the connection between the 'profile' or clue and the resulting conversations were never really all that clear to me. Notably, these also see far less use as the game goes on - so I imagine the jam's limitations and the looming deadlines might have been part of this. 

One time during the conversation with Abigail I also somehow softlocked the game, with all conversation options leading me back to the dialogue tree but none of them advancing it (this was specifically after managing to convince her to finally tell the truth). I had to restart the game and make liberal use of saves to somehow avoid the softlock, but I'm not entirely sure why it happened.

Storywise, I enjoyed it, but I also felt as though the tone was quite inconsistent - with Sofie and her missing sister being the main source of the oddities, in my eyes. It felt as though the characters frequently just forgot about the very real missing persons cases and Sofie's potentially dead sister (who we never follow up on), in favor of seemingly lighthearted exploration sequences and sex scenes. There's the sense that the characters never really properly acknowledge the danger inherent to the jersey devil, in spite of there being a lot of evidence to the contrary (and them mentioning said evidence, but never really taking away any lessons from it) - it comes off feeling as the story making them momentarily forget about the stakes for the sake of more slice of life scenes. There's also the odd matter of Terry's broken leg, which sounds like it should be far more severe than what the story treats it as (until chekhov's gun goes off and it becomes a problem near the ending).

That said, I don't want it to come off as just complaints - I think that the game is astoundingly polished for something made within a game jam's timeframe, especially given the complex coding that was presumably required to set up the investigation sequences. The characters, odd as they act sometimes, are incredibly charming, and the usage of photos for backgrounds works very well. The art in general is really good - the characters are very expressive, and, as I'm sure everyone has picked up on, Terry is absurdly hot. In general, this is an incredibly well put together visual novel, and you should be proud of yourself for managing to put something like this together!

Yeah this one's easily the funniest of the May Wolves this go around - I broke out laughing multiple times. While really funny, the lingo could easily come off as odd or slightly irritating, but I think that what elevates this above just a simple joke story is the level of care and effort put in elsewhere - the sprites are well drawn and expressive, the story of a group of idiots making a book/film/visual novel under time constraints is creative (and said book/film/visual novel is also, somehow, coherent - in spite of our scattered view of it), and the various in-game effects that compliment said book/film/visual novel (like the interruption / beep effects, or the ending sequence) showcase quite a lot of genuine effort and elevate the experience. 

I also really appreciate the choice of Egyptian mythology and the decision to make a POC-centered story - there's an implied whiteness in a lot of furry work given that they don't immediately read as any specific race and as such borrow from the cultural "default" of their world (which is usually some flavor of american / european), and I love the effort put into both the aesthetics of the work, and the folklore the story borrows from in order to change that. 

I think that, were the story longer, it might have wound up getting a bit old due to the meta stuff being slightly hard to follow at times and the comedic writing style perhaps getting a bit old - but as is, at its current runtime, it honestly feels kind of perfect.

Pretty much everyone before me has said that this one is really cute, but... it really is. There's an earnestness to the story here that is very charming, and which keeps it enjoyable all throughout even as the writing occasionally stumbles.

Speaking of, I think my main critique here would be the matter of specificity - there's quite a few scenes where I feel like the details that the story hangs on don't really help build the world any further, but rather bog it down somewhat. The cafe scene's already been mentioned in this regard, so I'll point to the scene of the customers in the bookstore as an example - we hang on Tyler fulfilling six different customers' requests for books, but due to how the story is written, it winds up feeling somewhat flat - while the portrayal of the job can serve to make the world and the bookstore feel more lived in, it feels like we're being told a checklist of events in a dry manner, rather than experiencing the world through Tyler's eyes. It feels like many of the details here could have been smoothed over to make way for the emotional core of the scene - it doesn't really matter what the customers are ordering, as much as it matters that a sudden influx of customers has arrived after a dry spell. 

I do want to praise the art and music here, though - they're both quite varied, with there being many custom tracks and quite a few CGs, which help keep the reading experience fresh all throughout. The artstyle especially is quite charming, and really helps add to the atmosphere of the work.

All in all, an entertaining read, in spite of a few hiccups here and there with the writing.

Of the DND-based entries in the jam, this is definitely the one that captures the game best - both in the specifics of play, and in spirit. Everyone here has two facets to them - the player, and the character - and both affect each other equally. Disagreements arise between players, or between them and the DM, and gathering everyone for every session is impossible, but when I look at the DND sections in the story, I find myself convinced that these characters really are a party, and that they do enjoy this in some form.

Of course, it's a shame for them that the surroundings are... less than ideal (in a way that makes for a very entertaining read). You can practically feel the awkwardness in the setup itself - Tyler being the 'creator' of the campaign, but being within the position of a player - which, to me at least, reads as him being so caught up in his own depression that he unintentionally makes Greg "pick up the slack" an play the role of the DM in his place out of sheer inertia. It's something that the story does very well - it showcases both the severity of Tyler's own depression, and how that depression can legitimately hurt his friends in turn - which only serves to feed it further, in a warped way.

Which isn't to say that Tyler's at fault here - or that anyone is, really.  I think that the characters here are written very well - they're realistic in their behaviors, and even the more "antagonistic" ones still do so in a way that's ultimately believable for a friend group. At the end of the day, Tyler's perspective is a very limited one, due to his own tendency for metaphorical self-flagellation, and his firm belief that there's nothing that can be done about the poor circumstances of his life. After all, the butterfly has already flapped its wings - what more can he even do now?

With all that praise said, one thing that I do think is worth noting is that the story was slightly hard to follow - part of me thinks this might be intentional, given how depression can often make days meld together in a dream-like way, but with the bulk of the story being in the sessions, and with us not being able to really tell what occurs in between them, I'd frequently get confused when characters would refer to things that happened off-screen and I'd have to pick up the pieces myself. It might be intentional, but given that Tyler is presumably well-aware of these things himself, it felt like it made the reading experience a bit harder than it should have been. 

As for the presentation... there really is so much good here - Sikyu's backgrounds are absolutely incredible and capture the fantasy world with a sense of vividness that really helps pull you into the DND, and the custom sprites are also really charming. What's most impressive to me, though, is how well everything is combined - custom sprites, premade sprites, photo backgrounds, painted backgrounds - all of these disparate parts are brought together in a way that feels like it fits really well, in spite of the conflicting art styles. I'd say Maybe Josh's sprite felt a bit out of place given the thick lineart, but that's just how the premade sprites go, and I think you did a fantastic job with putting it all together regardless.

If I hadn't made it clear, I think this was a really great entry to the jam, and I'd wholeheartedly recommend checking it out.

To be honest, my intention here was never for Mitch to be seen as a self insert, nor for werewolves to be an allegory for homosexuality - they're a nebulous 'other' in society, maybe, but the goal here isn't to say that werewolves can never be dangerous, nor that they weren't the source of the veterans' lasting trauma (or rather, part of it). It's to explore why it is that marginalized people can find themselves drawn to figures that are considered villainized 'others' by society - whether they be werewolves, witches, or anything else (though the former two are what the story explores with Mitch and Birdie respectively). Werewolves are just another one of these 'others' in the eyes of the village - but they're not inherently good and not inherently bad - just something that exists and which the characters of the story don't really understand.

With regards to the folklore thing, the story of Damartos was both meant as a nod to the original story of the greek Damarchus which much of the in-universe folklore surrounding werewolves was based on, and to show what the in-universe understanding of werewolves is - and how it varies between people with there being no one 'true' version (with Mitch, Leda, and Abel all bringing up different splinters of this same story). At the end of the day, it's just another one of the stories Mitch's father told him in an attempt to pass down a moral of some kind. 

Now, ultimately all of this is a matter of my intention - how well these things came across in the story is up to the reader, and I'm well aware of some of the ways in which these could have been improved (the specific callout of Thalis saying werewolves are 'unnatural' is something I didn't intend to be a metaphor for homosexuality, but I certainly can understand how one could get that impression given its similarity to real homophobic remarks). I suppose this is an inherent part of working under jam constraints, and of writing stories in general.

Regardless, I'm glad you enjoyed the story in spite of these issues, and I'm always glad to receive feedback! Honestly, stuff like the lack of sprite poses, the anachronisms and the lackluster "no transformation ending" (which is moreso a matter of me just forgetting to explicitly signpost it as the "no sex" option) is something I'm already interested in changing when the jam rating period ends.

This one was fun! I came into it knowing nothing, so part of me was always on edge expecting for it to somehow turn into a horror story - which made even the more casual scenes feel somewhat anxiety-inducing. In a way, though, this worked well - Fede's uncertainty about coming out to Anna mirroring the reader's uncertainty of waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak.

Speaking of which, I think the writing of the characters' and their dialogue is fantastic here - there's a lot of layers to their various interactions, each of them arriving to the villa with a different wish in mind - and though the story doesn't spell it out explicitly, I felt as though I could still put together a solid picture of everyone's motivations and differing perspectives. The one point of contention for me was is the coming out scene - where the transition from a somewhat calm chat to a full-on argument felt a bit too sudden, in my eyes. 

I think this might be a side effect of the characters' expressions and feelings being somewhat hard to track - the narration doesn't call it out, and while Sikyu's sprites are gorgeous (and Raimondo's especially are very expressive), Anna doesn't have a lot of variety in her expressions. Both of these can very well be intentional artistic choices, but it feels as though it somewhat diminishes the effect of the scene - Fede is obviously terrified of doing this, but we don't really feel this in the pacing, or even in the specifics of the dialogue - it didn't feel all that different from any other conversation in the story to me, in spite of its importance to the character.

Presentation-wise, I think the VN was somewhat lacking in sound effects and music - the vast majority of the story takes place in absolute silence, and while that can be a good way to get across the setting or to make specific moments stand out more, it comes off more as the project being unfinished here. That said, something which worked really well in terms of presentation was the positioning of the sprites - it's something that's rare to see in VNs, but when it's done well (and here it's done very well), it really elevates the experience - the sprites really do feel as though they're positioned in a physical space, rather than just being overlays on top of a background image. 

At the end of the day though, the sticking points I raised don't do much to diminish this otherwise very solid story - and that's without getting into Sikyu's incredible art and CGs, which are the cherry on top of it all. Fantastic job! 

This was a fun and thought-provoking time! As opposed to Wonder's experience, which was decidedly... mixed. In a funny way, I do appreciate just how short and "unfulfilling" this entry is - it manages to accurately portray a very real type of unglamorous "queer experience" - sometimes you go out of your comfort zone, try something new that you've heard should be good, but you're not really sure of, and it just kinda... sucks.

It's not Wonder's fault, it's not Mirth's fault, and though the Tanuki's an asshole I don't think that Wonder would have enjoyed his experience more had he not intervened - sometimes, the idea of finding one's local queer community is presented as a sort of 'panacea' for all of one's ails. It's a form of modern day folklore, really - the closeted queer person who finds solace in community by finally visiting a gay bar, and who then suddenly transforms into some sort of idealized, "normal" gay who flourishes in that environment - and just like any form of folklore, it's... not particularly real.

It works for some people, it doesn't for others, and though Wonder could have probably approached it better in many ways, it's hard to not be sympathetic to that experience. For how short this story is, it certainly got me thinking quite a bit!

I think there's a very solid emotional throughline in this story, and the parallels between Iseldur and The Fox were definitely fun to pick up on and analyze, but the way it's put together lets the potential of the story down somewhat. The writing feels a bit too expository at times - in a way that comes off as somewhat dry whenever the story shifts into flashback mode, or the mythology of the world is discussed. It's well fleshed out, but there's times where it feels like the story is focusing more on giving us lore for a broader world than on telling us more about the two central characters (an example would be the comments regarding how mages typically function in the world compared to the fox spirit). 

In general, it came off as somewhat odd for the fox to know so much about his own creation, the broader world, and the folklore surrounding him - it felt like it was there more for the sake of advancing the folklore theme, but I think it's a case where leaving in some ambiguity would help preserve the mystique and folkloric feel of the story, while making it a cleaner read.

Something that I'd have liked to see is more focus on the conversation between Iseldur and The Fox - I think it's a fantastic storytelling opportunity for both delivering more exposition in a natural way, and for fleshing out both characters a bit further - but as is, it felt a bit too short to be the climactic scene of the story.

Still, I think the story manages to get across some very interesting ideas in quite the short runtime - and I'm looking forward to seeing how the creator's future works!

What an incredible implementation of the theme! The gameplay elements I've come to expect from FdRstar are here in full force, with a really creative gimmick of rebuilding folklore from scraps - which isn't to say that it's just a gimmick, of course - the gameplay melds in well with the story's themes about how folklore changes over time, and how it can frequently be "sterilized" by ruling powers in order to enforce societal norms and rules (such as changing a homosexual lover into a woman).

The gameplay was a bit hard to wrap my head around at first, but once it clicked it felt quite intuitive - albeit with some trial and error to figure out where exactly to place my refutations. 

My only complaint here is that I would have liked to see more of an overarching narrative surrounding this - I really enjoyed seeing the recurring characters between the two stories you rebuild over the course of the game, and I would have liked to maybe get a bit more context for them. That said, I can imagine that it was quite hard to implement the mechanics during the jam period, so I understand why it feels a bit short in this regard.

Still, this was a great experience, and just like in last May Wolf, I think this was a fantastic example of how to implement gameplay into a VN! 

I think the setup here is quite strong and intriguing, but I feel as though the way it was presented was somewhat lacking - I feel as though the story reaches the "to be continued" screen before it can properly sell us on the concept - the readers are left with the vague threat of death and magic, but don't see much to actually prove its existence beyond a teleporting cat (who the characters have no real reason to actually trust). I would have liked to get to see the witch a bit more in the little we did get of the story, in order to get a better grasp of the threat it represents to our characters.

Writing-wise, I think it's slightly lacking - the repeated spelling errors (alongside the odd font choice) make it hard to follow the story, and the characters have a tendency to be a bit too literal (the dialogue during Marcus' backstory felt a bit too stiff... though it did result in a fantastic gag about the potential umbrellas have as weapons). Speaking of the umbrella gag, I do think the story's sense of humor is one of its strong points - there's some very solid gags here, though it does make me wonder if the story will keep them up when things get more serious, or if it'll fade away as the characters realize the severity of the situation at hand.

Regardless, I'm looking forwards to seeing what the story will look like when more of it is out - but as for now, I'm left wanting more from what we got.

Oh my god Bonet is so adorable.

This one was a fun time! As someone who enjoys baking quite a bit, I really like the importance placed on it within the plot, and the incorporation of recipes into it - the process of making breads and pastries really does feel just as magical as the literal magic within the work. It goes without saying, but the art here is absolutely fantastic - and both the incredibly emotive and cute sprites and the adorable CGs really help make the story's charming personality come forth.

I do think the writing of the story is a little off - the various spelling mistakes dotted across the story (lack of punctuation at the end of sentences, improper capitalization, and words which lack their final few letters for some reason) wound up taking me out of it quite a bit whenever I stumbled across them. 

I do think the story also has a slight tendency to spell out the characters' more complex emotions without properly setting them up earlier on - the moment that particularly stands out to me is the matter of the old letters and recipes that formed Bonet. Rosso seems to be entirely fine with tossing them away during the beginning portions of the story, until he suddenly isn't when it's time for the climax of the story to occur. I think a few more hints towards his conflicted stance on the matter could have gone a long way towards making that conflict feel less sudden - because while Rosso has been somewhat rude to Bonet before that in the story, it feels as though his outburst goes a step above just that.

That said, I do understand that reading the story in English is not the ideal way to experience it / just a translation - I imagine both of these issues might be less prevalent when reading it in its original form - and, regardless of them, I'd say this visual novel is certainly worth experiencing in spite of these issues due to just how charming and entertaining it is. 

A quick and simple My Wolf story with a very good grasp on VN presentation - I especially enjoyed the little sounds the characters made as they spoke and the speaking / blinking animations they had. I don't have too much to say about the plot other than that it knows what it wants, and it executes it well - the little bit of the worldbuilding that we do get seems quite interesting, and barring a few spelling and formatting mistakes here and there, the writing is very solid.

I do think that the story dumps a bit too much exposition on the reader at times - it especially stands out in the beginning, where the MC's backstory is exposited to us in NVL format rather than letting us stew in the uncertainty and discover it as the story goes on (which feels somewhat odd given that the MC does wind up explaining it to Lucius later down the line - which winds up feeling like a repeat of what we already know, rather than being a compelling scene in which we discover the MC's backstory alongside Lucius).

In general, I think the story could have benefited slightly from an increased length for the sake of letting the characters breathe for a bit before the smut arrived in full force - so that we could know them better and feel more connected to them before the MC makes his decision to go live on the moon - but I think it still makes for a very enjoyable read thanks to the fun worldbuilding, the beautiful art, and the VN's great presentation.

Giving this one a 5/5 creativity rating on account of the sword cock.

This one was just a fun, kinky time - it knows what it is, and it certainly doesn't take itself very seriously. I'd say it's definitely worth reading to anyone who enjoys these kinks (or who wants to see what I mean by 'the sword cock'), but doesn't have too much outside of it - which I think is a totally fine thing for it to be. 

I also wanted to shout out the way the creative sprite manipulations used to represent the transformation scenes - it was a neat little detail that made great use of the medium to convey the transformations, in my opinion.

In this house, we support dadfucking. 

The Games We play is a lighthearted romp following a jilted man on a mission - to fuck his ex's dad. It's a worthwhile mission, albeit not a particularly noble one, on account of said dad being absurdly hot.  

I think the story is at its best when it focuses on the comedy inherent to this concept - from Harvey's seemingly oblivious nature as he makes advances on Ezra, to Ezra's musings about totally not being gay or anything like that, the plot is thoroughly enjoyable when it focuses on the central relationship. I do think that the surroundings characters, however, are somewhat weaker - they feel distinct from each other, but they ultimately weren't all that compelling to me on account of not really feeling like proper friends of the MC. 

For all the screentime they had within the DND and LARP sections, they felt more like plot devices meant to advance the story rather than a group of actual friends. I think this is in part because of how these sections are presented - the characters mostly banter and make snide jabs at each other, and they don't even seem to particularly enjoy each other's company - so it felt hard for me to grasp why it is that these characters even play TTRPGs together and what it is that they enjoy in it.

Of course, it's not uncommon for these types of friendships to be hard to grasp, or to seem "adversarial" to outsiders - especially within the context of TTRPG groups that have existed for a long time, with their own rules and inside jokes and whatnot - but at the end of the day I feel as though the story could have done a better job of getting the nuances of these relationships across.

Despite that, like I said - when this game focuses on the central relationship, it's a damn good game about dadfucking. I think the more serious plot surrounding the relationship and the motivations behind it winds up getting bogged down a bit by the presence of the friend group, but I do like what's presented here - and by the time I reached the ending scenes, I was practically hooting and hollering when the pair finally got together. RysaEa deserves all the praise he's gotten for the final CG, and the writing of the accompanying sex scene was fantastic as well - it's all top tier stuff.

A Werewolf in Charleston feels... dense. It's about many things at once - self actualization, religious zealotry, gay love, the inefficacy of peaceful protests in the face of authoritarian rule, and the fact that it would probably be really fucked up if you had a wolf inside your body which desperately wanted out.

Unfortunately, I'd say it does too much at once - and certainly far too much to fit within the jam's 25k word count. The topics covered here are incredibly sensitive, and by the story's own admission, it's not subtle at all about depicting them - by the point you've finished the story, you've seen werewolves undergo a downright staggering amount of hate crimes, with very little breathing room in-between. At best, it manages to portray just how awful these things are, but at worst, it feels like it's using them for shock value more so than to make an actual point. It serves as a constant reminder of just how grim things are for the werewolves - but with every additional dead background character that is glossed over for the sake of moving on to the next shocking scene, every werewolf added to the pile of dead bodies, it feels as though the story cares less and less about just how horrifying it all is, and more about moving on to the next action scene. 

It's not as though the story doesn't address this at all - but what matters is the scale of it all. A scene or two of Oliver grieving the dead and regretting the mistakes that led them there simply does not feel like enough when the scale of these deaths is so large - over the course of the story, Oliver witnesses dozens of werewolves dying in tragedies that are meant to reflect very real events that occurred in America - from both far in the past, and in very recent times, with direct allusions to events such as the Pulse shooting - and when dealing with topics such as this, it is imperative to treat them with the respect they deserve rather than as just minor setpieces in a story. Ironically enough, this winds up making the characters feel downright inhuman - those who survive come off as incredibly callous to what they've seen over the course of the story, and those who die wind up being nothing more than a statistic - just more anonymous werewolves murdered in cold blood by the bigots of the city, rather than people with rich inner lives that deserve to be mourned. 

With all that said, however, I do think that there's a ton to like in this visual novel - the presentation is downright incredible, with the various sound cues and animated visuals that are presented elevating many of the more dramatic scenes by a ton - it's something that's incredibly rare to see in the medium, and which I'll dearly miss when moving on to other works, because it really does make for some incredible scenes.

On the story level, I also think there's a lot of good stuff. Where the story is at its strongest is when it covers the body horror inherent to being a werewolf - the initial scenes of the MC trying to hide his condition under wrap come to mind, with the direction of the visuals and audio coming together to make for something that is truly horrifying - but incredibly engrossing to watch as they unfold (not going to mention the specifics, because I do think it's worth reading the story just to experience these scenes). Growth and change, while positive, are not always clean or pretty - and this story makes it very clear. Lycanthropy is portrayed as a fundamental part of one's being - and one that, if mishandled and not properly accepted, will fester until it explodes into displays of gratuitous violence and body horror, brought forth by one's own inner demons breaking free. It's a metaphor that works very well to display the dangers of bottling up parts of yourself and hiding your true self from the real world, and I also really liked the repeating metaphor of the "mercy-killing" throughout the work and what that eventually culminated in.

Ultimately, I think the problem here is mostly one of scope relative to the jam's constraints - there's the bones for a bunch of very intriguing and compelling stories here, but combining them all into such a short runtime means that the breakneck pacing of it all and the sheer amount of dramatic scenes winds up negatively affecting the writing and storytelling in ways which I don't assume were intentional. Regardless, I do think that there's a lot to enjoy here, and it still manages to be quite the entertaining read all throughout.

This is an incredibly promising game, that falters somewhat under the weight of its own ambition - from the voice acting to the choice structure, I can definitely see where inspiration was taken from Slay The Princess, but it does leave me wondering if such a project was fit for a game jam like May Wolf - because of the time limits imposed by the jam, we only really have one route out of seemingly many, with some variation near the end - and quite a few dead ends to tease us. 

These dead ends are the main problem I have with the story - while the sheer variety of choices in Slay The Princess helped make the game feel vast and unending, the amount of dead ends here makes the game feel quite constricting - to the point where I wonder if we needed to be told just how much we were "missing", because as is it feels as though it casts a shadow over what we do already have for this story (especially when the only route we currently have feels like the "bad" route in so many ways).

And, in spite of what I said, what we have is fantastic! The characters are well-defined and interesting, the writing is gripping, and the voice actors elevate the script even further! Libulan especially stands out as a character, with his beautiful sprites, his actor's fantastic performances, and just by being really interesting to follow in general - just like how the princess is the centerpiece of STP, he makes for a fantastic centerpiece to this work - and one which leaves me incredibly curious as to what the rest of the routes will look like. 

There's some small issues with the presentation, such as the voices not all being at the same volume (with the MC's voice especially being quite a bit more quiet than that of the rest of the cast) and it feeling as though there aren't enough backgrounds for me to really properly grasp the world here (I especially would have liked for there to be a background of the MC's house, but I understand that it would be really hard to get it right given the usage of stock photos), but at the end of the day this preview left me thoroughly impressed, and I'll certainly follow to see what comes next - whether it's in visual novel form, or as any other form of interactive fiction.

I think this VN does a near-perfect job - the story is tight and perfectly conveys the MC's declining mental state, the horror and anxiety of being lost at sea while slowly losing yourself is incredibly gripping, and the CG-only style is kept fresh by the large variety of them and the charming line boil effect. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time while reading this, and would wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone looking for something spooky to read! 

The one "complaint" I do have is a very subjective one, and also one that is more related to the context of the jam than to the VN itself - while I understand that the characters are in the Bermuda Triangle, I still think the folklore theming is quite weak here. At the end of the day, I don't think the story (and the supernatural shenanigans within it) would lose anything from being set elsewhere - at which point it just starts to feel more like set dressing. 

For a story that has so many layers and deep meanings to things, it feels like we're left with somewhat of a surface level interpretation of the folklore theme - and I think it's a shame, because I do think there's stuff to focus on here - Colin's condition of having no reflection is rife for creative interpretations of existing folklore (and in fact, we do see a bit of that, as far as the "vampire" comparisons go), and I think honing in a bit more on those elements, making them clearer to readers, and connecting them more to the central themes of the work could have done it some good in this regard. 

Despite me saying all that - the jam theme is basically optional, and I think the VN does an absolutely fantastic job as far as everything else goes - so my recommendation for others to play it stands!

This is a perfect example of what an FVN can look like when everyone involved is at the top of their game - from the fantastic story, to the beautifully painterly sprites and CGs, the incredibly unique and polished ui, and even just how animated it all is (both in the backgrounds literally being animated and in the various ways the sprites are manipulated and moved about in order to make them pop), in spite of the relative (yet very understandable) lack of sprite variety - I think this is a fantastic example of just how far these individual elements of visual novel creation can be pushed, and how they can all combine together to make for a great experience.

Thank you for the wonderful review!

I definitely agree with the critique here - this was my most ambitious jam project (in spite of the small scale, the amount of characters / cgs / backgrounds is far beyond what I've done before, and the watercolor style was also quite tricky to work with) so it definitely suffered slightly in terms of sprite variety as a result, and your points about the writing feeling flat at times / things being a bit unclear in the beginning are definitely something I need to work on.

Regardless, I'm very glad you enjoyed the story! This was (among other things) me trying to break down and further explore the idea of transformation / the appeal it has to me, and I'm glad those aspects were interesting to others as well (even if they are presumably more normal about the subject matter than I am).

This was a great entry! I adored the creativity of the story and of the various locales displayed within it, and the sheer variety of the sprites and backgrounds that came as a result of it. Some of the initial conversations were a tad slow in my eyes, but once the story got going, I was at the edge of my seat until the very end. 

Also, El is adorable and is the best boy.

This was an incredible experience - it felt as though I was reading a macabre fairytale come to life, with so many little idiosyncrasies and unique, lively characters that pulled me incredibly deeply into the world. Though I'm not familiar with much of the folklore that this story was based upon, this is, in my eyes, undoubtedly one of the best implementations of the theme I've seen. 

The art is beautiful, the characters are compelling, and the mystery and dread that comes as a result of the everpresent sun makes the world of this story incredibly fascinating, left me constantly curious about what the next setpiece I'd see was while I was reading it.

Fantastic job all around!