itch.io

Unbelievably good, so far probably my favorite VN out of the whole year.

I read this in two parts and I was fully expecting this to be my full review. After finishing it, I do think the ending is not quite as strong as the rest of the game, but only in so far as the rest of the game had hyped me for sky-high levels of quality.

The art direction is genius, but I think the writing might be even stronger, every character feels so distinctively real and charismatic despite being painted in light strokes. The slow build up is masterfully done and a joy to read through. And even though it does not affect the quality of the work itself, I admire how the dev incorporated all themes from the game jam and made them integral part of the story. In particular, the story doesn't settle for simply featuring a deer character and calling it a day, but instead it uses this fact as a springboard for the themes it explores. Really good stuff.

** SPOILERS **

Like I said, if I must find some fault in this, I do think the ending isn't as strong as the surrounding material:

- First of all, from a structural point of view, the story feels like 95% prologue and build up that gets solved in one short climactic scene. I wish we could have actually confronted the stuff the game had so masterfully built up to.

- A bit of a nitpick, but while I quite enjoyed the mechanics behind how the hypnosis works, I think the one million flashbacks to make sure we understand the connection between the tape and what happened before is overkill: I'm pretty sure the average reader will be able to make those connections on their own, especially considering they were remarked pretty overtly as red flags at the time they happened. The explanation also feels just tiny bit ridiculous in how it tries to tie up *everything* that happened in the most literal sense (does every instance of toxic masculinity need to find a 1:1 instruction in the tape?). It is also worth mentioning that explaining the logic of the story to such a degree ends up making the few elements the story does not explain feel like plot holes (e.g. why does the lion experience memory blanks?)

- Finally, I can't help but feel like the game's focus on the physical element of the premise detracts from the drama of it all (i.e. we need to defeat Mr Evil Penis). It's interesting that the post-game commentary reveals that the hypno tape was an added element to give the lion character something to investigate on, because I feel like that's way more engaging as an antagonistic force than the drug. The characters having to confront Toxic Masculinity itself would have been much more interesting than focusing on a synecdoche, is what I'm trying to say.

Despite my nitpicks with the ending though, it bears repeating: incredible work, I can't wait to see what the dev cooks next.

We will determine the best course of action if something like that were to happen, but no reason to worry: we don't want anyone to be excluded because of technical problems.

If you encounter technical problems, just get in touch immediately with us and we'll see how to address it. We have the option to give overrides to the deadline.

The rule only concerns the game itself, in order to give everyone a chance to experience what you were able to do within the constaints of the game jam. Editing extraneous stuff like the itch.io page is fine!

Hello! As long as you've got some visuals to go with your story (which must include some kind of deer), it's eligible for the jam. Have fun!

(Issued resolved)

Hello. While we are affiliated with the FVN server and we use it as a hub for the community, that server is not run by the NovemBuck team so we can't help you with any issues regarding that.

From memory, I think upon registration there is a verification mechanism to make sure you read the rules, that might be your issue?

In any case, for issues related to the server you can try to contact Akiba (listed on the NovemBuck page) who is one of the admins there.

> I really tried to have the most homogeneous artstyle, and personally I feel it works. It's very hard to gather assets with right to use...

I think the assets you used are fine on their own, but I don't think the mix of artstyles comes off as purposeful. For example, most of the backgrounds are pixel art, the sprite of the protagonist is very anime, some wolves are of the more realistic beastman kind, some have cartoony exagerated body proportions, etc.

> There is mistakes but I am shocked you couldn't even read! I searched some online dictionary deeply, reading the comments of native english to check a lot. Do you have some examples of ESL-isms I missed? I already know there is a pronouns mistake.

Just a random example, because I remember my reading group was confused about what was going on. "Both of you freeze out of fascination for the new wolf appearing." We weren't sure how many characters were involved in this scene, "both of you" makes it seem like it's referring to the MC and the wolf he just fought, but I think you probably meant the MC and the girl he rescued.

I read this entry with some friends and, boy, was it an experience.

I need to preface this by saying I'm definitely not the target audience for this work, considering this appears to be a very horny heterosexual piece with some specific... fixations on certain body parts and proportions. But I was more than ready to give it a fair shake.

Unfortunately the VN, as it currently is, is in such a rough state that I find it difficult to appreciate it for what it was probably trying to do. The prose is riddled with mistakes and ESL-isms which sometimes make the text genuinely difficult to understand. The sprites are often positioned irrespective of backgrounds and their sizes tend to be all over the place and the music feels a bit repetitive.

I quite liked the backgrounds you used, but like everything else they lack a unifying artistic vision. The art styles are all over the place.

Even beyond these issues, there wasn't much in the story for me to latch on to, if you take away the horny stuff. It is structurally quite weak, it's a lot of going back and forth from the village to the forest and vice versa and having weird random encounters. Does the protagonist even end up using the "Love Perfume" he acquires? 

What I will say is that the VN is so unabashedly shameless and out-there that my reading group and I were having a lot of fun with it despite its flaws, eager to find out what crazy thing was going to happen next.

First of all, congrats on releasing your VN!

I didn't quite know what to expect going in. Not going to lie, this is probably the first time I thought a thumbnail looked funny: the title "All I need is you" juxtaposed with the shape of a meteor threatening to wipe out all life on Earth was hilarious to me. I wasn't quite sure if this was intentional or not.

Then the story begins and we are greeted by the president announcing he had blown up the moon, bringing about the apocalypse on Earth... I hope I don't sound disrespectful when I say this is probably going to be one of the highlights of the jam for me!

Unfortunately the rest of the story wasn't quite able to match the energy of the crazy opening and went for a serious tone instead. This isn't bad choice per se, but I am afraid the rest of the story remained a bit too abstract for the emotional stakes to work. We aren't shown specific memories or event, instead we are treated with the narrative and the characters just stating and repeating over and over how much they love each other. This doesn't have the same emotional weight and the single concrete element we are given (the wedding venue) isn't strong enough to compensate for the lack of details. And the story seems to be in a rush to end instead of establishing a mood: for example, the protagonist goes looking for his partner and they find each other immediately, the first car he happens to bump into happens to be his partner's.

In terms of presentation, even though you just used the jam sprites and some generic backgrounds, I thought you did a fine job with the tools at your disposal!

Overall, I don't know if this is what you were going for, but if nothing else I had fun with the premise of the story. I hope you continue working on your skills!

Review: https://itch.io/event/28922122

Review: https://itch.io/e/28898854/loudo-rated-tomatoes-are-a-kind-of-fruit

damn bitch you ever gonna post an update? (afectionly)

Stunning presentation and interesting premise. The characters are pretty fun too, their interactions are easy to read. My only gripe with it is that the story basically resolves itself, so other than the fun premise there isn't a lot of meat to the story.

Having read of the difficulties experienced by the dev and considering the current state of the project, I don't think it would make much sense to rate it at the moment. I do hope the project gets eventually finished, because I am very curious to see what the dev's vision eventually realized.

When I first saw the NovemBear thumbnails, this was one of the entries that intrigued me the most. What is happening in that picture? I want to find out.

The art is lovely, even though the lack of music is a pity. The story is a surrealist experience so far, and I can't say I got any answers to the questions I had entering into this project. That's fine on its own, I don't mind a work that is more about the experience than the plot. But as it currently is, the VN made me go "What was the point?" more than anything.

Again, I hope to be eventually able to read the finished product so I can understand what was the author's intentions vs what was due to the tribulations of the jam.

An interesting read, I appreciate the straight representation. There is a lot of art and even though I personally prefer the BGs over the sprites, it's just a matter of personal taste, both are good. I will note the art clashes a bit with the story at points though (for example, there are BGs with a lot of snow even though the story does not feature any snow).

I will premise this by saying I'm not a huge fan of romance or slice-of-life, but my biggest gripe with this story is there isn't much in the way of obstacles that the protagonist needs to overcome, or other kinds of twists that would make the plot engaging.

Very good package: excellent writing, art, music, etc. In particular, I like that the whole VN basically consists of small scenes and vignettes: it makes it so there is never a dull moment and we get little moments of payoff throughout the story.

I will mainly focus on the parts that I wasn't as big of a fan of, but like I said I think the VN as a whole is excellent, and definitely worth your time!

- The initial couple of scenes were the only ones I didn't like, and if I were in a different mood (and I wasn't trying to force myself to read all NovemBear entries), they might even led me to drop the VN altogether. The very wordy exposition dumps were not a graceful introduction to the characters and their situation. I also thought it was a very weird choice to have the narration recap what happened before, when the VN opens with the protagonist recounting those very same details to the investigator. Hearing those details from the conversation, instead of indirectly from the narration, would have surely been more engaging. Other than that though, the writing was smooth sailing from beginning to end. (I do think the very ending was trying a bit too much to elicit an emotional response from me, but it's still well executed.)

- While the art for the sprite was amazing, I wasn't a fan of all the expressions (in particular, the parents). Since the sprites never change expressions, in some scenes I thought their default expression felt out of place. Speaking of which, I think the game should have probably considered not using side sprites in some scenes: it's a bit odd to see the protagonist in his normal clothes when he's supposed to be naked or in football gear, especially when we already have CGs.

- The way the "incident" on the football field is portrayed is a bit odd. We cut to the CG very suddenly, but nothing accompanies this change so it ends up feeling flat. In particular, the audio track continues unperturbed.

*Beware spoilers*

I give You Are Not Callum credit for the very ambitious multiple choices and endings. It was definitely interesting to navigate through. 

The story features a lot of perplexing choices, like the rainbow bracelet being the source of the demonic possession (am I supposed to read into the symbolism), casual racism, straight conversion therapy... It was fun to read through, but I can see some people taking issue with the content, and again I'm not sure how much of it is intentionally supposed to read symbolically.

The biggest flaw for me, though, was the lack of narration, with the entire VN consisting of just dialogue and direct thoughts by the POV character. This hurts the VN ability to set up an atmosphere, a mood, as well as the overall pacing in general (the change from scene to scene is disorienting and there is no possibility to linger on certain moments).

The VN shows promise. There are some cozy vibes and some very nice sprites and illustrations, though you can definitely tell the project was rushed because of the jam deadline (there is little music, the story isn't finished, the backgrounds feature some modern structures, etc.).

The biggest problem for me though is that the largest chunk of the wordcount is devoted to exposition which isn't thrilling to read and goes nowhere. Maybe the rest of the story will make use of all these worldbuilding elements, but even then, I can't help but feel this wasn't the best way to introduce them. The more character-driven central scene is nice, but all the surrounding fat detracts a bit IMHO.

Delightful! I was pleasantly surprised by how fun of an experience this was. The game gave me a few chuckles but it was competently written all around: the action, the tasteful exposition, the setups and payoffs... Also, one of the best sound designs out of the whole jam, the music rocked and the stomping sounds pulled me in and were perfectly mixed with the music.

The one thing I wasn't crazy about were the CGs with the kaiju monster itself. I guess the design of the monster fits the tone of the story and the art style is coherent with the sprites, so I shouldn't complain... But when the writing and the audio introduce the monster entering the scene I was genuinely grasped by the story. So when the screen goes from black to the cartoony monster design, I can't help but feel a bit deflated and pulled out of the story. I think less is more applies to this VN.

My other minor criticism concerns the romance, which feels a bit unrealistic and too fast paced. This can be excused as it is sort of expected in this kind of genre. Plus, the payoff with the bonus scene was amazing.

There is undoubtedly a lot of talent on display here, but I must admit the overall package left me pretty unsatisfied.

Starting with the presentation, the art is pleasant to look at and I actually quite like that a lot of the assets are currently unfinished. Considering the art gets sketchier and sketchier the more we get away from the mall, it creates a sense of the world unraveling as we move away from the protagonist's comfort zone.

However, while having a VN with lots of CGs and no sprites can definitely work, I believe the prose it currently is doesn't complement that choice very well. Narration is often scarce in VNs because we can see the characters emoting and doing stuff on the screen. Here, however, the characters are pretty static since they only appear in CGs, so I think the story should have been written a bit more like a traditional book. As it stands now, it almost feels like reading a chat log: a bit sterile.

The overall rhythm and pacing of the story are also slightly off, it doesn't feel like pauses and block breaks are always used at appropriate times. Take this one block of text as a random example: "I'm on my feet, I think. I don't remember. I need air. The air isn't working?" Breaking this into 2-3 different blocks would make the whole passage feel much more frantic and impactful.

The writing is otherwise serviceable, but it does have a tendency to be a bit abstract ("when the fist comes it's cataclysmic") and surprisingly detached, considering the subject matter ("I'm feeling a lot of shit that I've never felt before"). I can't say I've ever felt like I got inside the protagonist's head during my reading.

A final note on the presentation: while the music was nice when it was there, it was surprisingly sparse. Most surprisingly, the most tense scenes were often the ones without any music.

As far as the story goes, I must first of all give credit to Since November for tackling a challenging topic that feels pretty personal to the author. I like the story's premise in theory more than I liked the execution though. The story is very cerebral, with characters preaching their philosophies and opinions, rather than those emerging naturally from the narrative. The story doesn't really give the characters much to react to (except for the premise of the story itself), so for the most part this ends up feeling like the characters explaining their opinions to the player. Not very engaging.

Some of the thoughts being committed to the page are also very off topic and they don't feel really relevant to the theme of the story. A lot of opinions on movies are presented, for example, and I can't help but feel like this is not be the story they are super relevant to.

The biggest problem for me, though, is that this story deals with the one thing every human on Earth has to deal with (our own mortality) and ultimately it didn't feel like it had much to add to the reflection each one of us has undoubtedly done about the topic. The story has a bunch of characters reacting in different ways, but it does nothing more than state those different perspectives. Some people would do A, some others would do B, so what? I think any one of those routes could be developed into interesting stories: yes, give a me a romance doomed to last just a day, give me a character's emotional journey as he seeks and experiences assisted suicide, etc. But the story just states these premises and then it's immediately over.

I also found Val's route very confusing and perplexing. It reads to me like a parody of romance stories, what with the overdramatic character talking about "his wolf" and the over-the-top CGs, but I'm not sure if that was the intended tone... If it was, I question what this parody has to do with the rest of the story.

I realize I'm coming across as pretty harsh in my review, so it's worth noting that plenty of people had a much different response to the story than I did. I hope I at least managed to explain why the story didn't work for me, but that doesn't mean it won't work for you.

I must admit I was not in love with the writing style, it felt like a pretty uneven package. We go from sessions where the narration is entirely short sentences to sections where the narration is so dense and abstract that it makes me start to zone out. We can from very literary language to characters being described as "cute". I feel like this would benefit from an editorial pass.

The presentation was otherwise immaculate though. The backgrounds perfectly communicate a sense of loneliness and isolation and the simple understated sound design perfectly highlights the key moments and functions as a narrative tool as well. For example, every choice being accompanied by a sound bite serves to hint at the significance of "choosing" even before the story addresses that point.

Above all though, I loved the story, and it is one that will stay with me long after I finished reading it. **Slight spoilers** I guess, but I couldn't really help but frame the whole story as the struggle of homosexuality vs Abrahamic religions.

The end sequence was incredible.

I don't have much to say about this one, but I enjoyed! I thought the writing in particular was really solid, even if not a whole lot has happened yet I'm definitely curious for more.

I loved the edited BGs, I thought they perfectly fit the mood. The rest of the art was good, but there was a bit of a confusing contrast between the almost overly detailed sprites and the much more simple CGs.

While I enjoyed the piece, the overall tone was slightly confusing as well. The narration was very artsy and moody, but it was occasionally interrupted by some choices that felt straight out of a comedic anime. The two biggest culprit is the big fujoshi mission statement (accompanied by boss music) followed by the hilariously cartoony logo. I can't say I hated that part, but considering that in the current version that functionally is the current climax of the story, it being so disconnected from what happened before doesn't feel right. I guess it could work well when this is just a small part of a much bigger story.

I haven't gone through all NovemBear entries yet, but out of what I have read so far Face to Face has been the biggest surprise and possibly my favorite entry so far. Carried mainly by the quality of the writing (plus some excellent music choices), considering the very basic visuals. Even the premise of the story is not particularly novel, just masterfully told, and that makes even the VN's shortcomings shine. Even the most glaring issue of the VN, i.e. the mostly complete absence of backgrounds, ends up working for me: the story is set in a building dedicated to the performance arts, the rooms are just set pieces, the barely illuminated actors are what brings them to life.

I feel like I can't talk much more about this without spoiling the story, but I will say I appreciated how the title frames the thematic core of the story.

If you've skipped Face to Face because of the luckluster presentation, please give it a try.

Unfortunately I can't say much about the story because what is there is too brief to form an idea about what it will end up being about. The demo though shows much promise. The art is lovely and the dev already proved above than average mastery of Renpy with a few well-executed tricks, such as the blurry background at the beginning and the custom messages throughout.

Can't wait to see more!

I must premise this by saying this is very impressive as a jam entry made by a one-person team. The art is plentiful and lovely, the lighting and the use of color used for the backgrounds to highlight the most dramatic moments is especially striking.

Above all, I love the experimentation of having different section focused on visual and auditory experiences. It's a very interesting idea and I like how the story does a lot with that concept in general, of the characters being able to perceive different things. The highlight for me was the scene in the bar, where the inability to see or hear is used a lot to hide some information from one character or the other.

I don't think there's much more than could have been accomplished within the constraints of the game jam, but I would like to see the presentation pushed even further. One thing that I felt that was missing is that the "blind sections" ended up feeling a bit too silent for me, in terms of diegetic sounds. I know it's asking a lot, but having some voice-acting for those sections would really highlight the difference. As it is right now, the dialogue in particular ends up feeling very same-y regardless of whose perspective we are in. (This isn't helped by the magic technology introduced in the story. While I understand the need to have something to facilitate the two characters interacting, I think something a bit more grounded than what essentially amounts to telepathy would have fit the story better.)

The story explores a lot both narratively and with its presentation and was in general a joy to read. I must admit though I had a big issue with the story itself: I found its overreliance on melodrama and tragedy a bit tiring. There is too much going on, which hurts the pacing and doesn't allow us enough time to process each sad backstory element because we got to move on to the next one. The whole story seems to be build so that we can experience a sense of catharsis by the final scene, but that didn't really happen for me. In fact, by the final scene, instead of trying to sublimate what we have accumulated so far (which is a lot) the characters introduce even more sad backstory elements! For a short story such as this, I think we would have needed more streamlining.

One final element that I would have liked to see explored and developed a bit more is what exactly kicked off this relationship in the first place. On one hand, we have the deaf guy stumbling into a complete stranger on his way to his girlfriend's funeral and deciding to invite him to a gay date even though he has zero clue about his sexuality... Which is pretty wild already on its face, but again, funerals are usually held within a few days after someone dies, and the way the protagonist acts doesn't seem like the way someone would act when your significant other's corpse is barely even cold.

On the other hand, the blind guy is stripped of much of his agency in the romance because his personal circumstances (he has no friends, no jobs, no perspectives...), so the answer to why he's attracted to the otter seems to be he's receptive to someone finally paying attention to him. Not a problem per se, but the story seemingly equates this character's personal circumstances with him being blind. As someone who has dated a blind guy, I would have enjoyed the relationship being a bit more driven equally by both characters.

Having said all that, I reiterate this was a very enjoyable and interesting read, and a very impressive entry.

The art, first of all, is lovely and I think it's very appropriate for the story being told. The characters come across as inviting but vulnerable when they need to be.

I'm not familiar with RPGMaker so I can't really comment on how impressive it was to use that system for a VN. The implementation looked fine to me, even though the commands were not as intuitive as they are on Renpy. The visuals were interesting and not something I've seen before, featuring both traditional characters sprites and a mini-map of the room where the scene is taking place, with simplified models of the same characters. While the idea is interesting, I think it needs to be honed a bit more: I must admit I found myself most of the time ignoring the minimap because the sprites in the foreground just demanded more attention. In the few moments when the scene was not cluttered with sprites though, the minimap did manage to stand out, and the payoff at the end of the story was lovely. Maybe it would have worked better with side sprites? 

The music felt appropriate but I'm sorry to say it very quickly became unbearable repetitive.

I appreciated the story, but I must admit I did not find it as engaging as it could have been. I think the main issue is that, for the most part, instead of witnessing the story firsthand, we are mostly told by characters about key story moments that happened in the past. So while there is nothing wrong with the story itself, it is not presented in the most exciting manner.

Still, a very promising debut!

I've been spoiled by Erebus at this point. We can expect his projects to push the limits in terms of slick presentations, and Blackout: Zero doesn't disappoint. Unlike his previous works, this one doesn't wait to reveal his cards and wow from the very title screen. The visuals do a lot to sell the tone of the game.

My only complaint here is the car scene in the opening: while an impressive feat, I quickly found myself feeling motion sickness trying to read on a moving background. I can see Erebus is already aware of another minor issue (regarding the way the journal works) I had while playing, so I'm confident that will be fixed in the final version.

While the story isn't finished, what is there is very exciting, I was intrigued to be able to read a new chapter dealing with the same character from One More Light. The writing is sharp and the opening lines immediately pull you into the story.

The only issue I noticed was sometimes a tendency to repeat the same things in narration and in dialogue. As an example, you will have the narration stating "I've crossed paths with my share of would-be prophets, self-proclaimed saints shouting nonsense at street corners. But to hear one preaching in a bar? Odd doesn't even begin to describe it." and the very next line is another character saying "Never good when people start talking about gods n' religion in a pub, mate." (What makes this example especially striking is that not only the idea is repeated twice, but it comes from two different characters.)

While I want to see where the story leads to before forming a complete opinion, I liked the supernatural premise of the story and, more importantly, the way it is presented. We are not given a complete picture, and some of snippets of information we need to go dig from the character's journal: the mystery keeps us engaged. The character interactions are also very engaging, the protagonist's relationship with his colleague is definitely the glue holding this story together.

I must admit I personally found my attention wane a bit during the most mundane investigation sections. Because of the supernatural premise of the story and its short length, the investigation is mainly about being given new information rather than discovering it, so when the investigation isn't accompanied by a bit of character drama I found myself not as engaged. I think this is a result of having a lot of most interesting bits of the story for me frontloaded in the beginning of the VN. But this might be down to personal preference and didn't hinder my overall enjoyment of the VN thanks to the story's brisk pacing.

I can't wait for a new chapter of Mycroft's story, detective extraordinaire!

Beautifully written and presented story with a very interesting premise. I must admit the "setting", for lack of a better term, felt fresh to me. It might be me not being super familiar with the genre, but I can't think of many other stories that feature a world where the climate and ecological disaster has already turned everything to shit, and the apocalypse is still so far in the distance that the characters can afford to go on with their normal lives. It's an interesting tension, I must admit I had some trouble initially because the stakes felt too dire (everything is dead) and not dire enough (and yet food is not a concern) at the same time. And yet it's a tension that mirrors the real world to a T and makes for a nice parallel to the emotional stakes of the story. The contrast between nature being described as dead and yet visually depicted as hauntingly beautiful still is also nice contrast.

The personal story worked as well, and everyone did their part: the prose was evocative, the music set the mood, and the art was impressive. There are a couple of points where I feel the story could have been improved, but they are minor points in an otherwise impressively woven tapestry.

My main point of criticism is that, with how effective the story was at hinting at things and establishing a mood, I think it could have resisted the impulse to spell out certain things as explicitly as it did. For example, the descriptions of the environment are so effective that what was going on was immediately clear to me, and yet the characters still spend a good chunk of their dialogue delivering exposition about the state of the world. Another example is when a clear parallelism is established between Owen and Robin, by having them repeat the same things, and yet the narrative still feels like it needs to draw that point explicitly by having Owen literally transform into Robin.

I wish there was a bit more trust in the reader being able to piece things together. For a contrast, I think the story did an amazing job at stopping just short of explaining the "fishing stakes". Arthur says he needs something to take the bait in order to feel closure, and it's up to us to realize that that already happened, he's already fished something out of the lake. Perfect!

Another minor point of criticism, somewhat linked to the previous point, is that while the narration is patiently paced and very effective at showing, it felt like the dialogue was sometimes speedrunning things and going for big sweeping statements. The scene where Arthur "opens up" is probably the biggest offender: in just a few lines we go from wailing about how the character is feeling, to talking about the protagonist's Asperger syndrome, to trying to convey who Robin was as a person in very abstract and general terms (he was so smart, kind, etc.). In general, I think the dialogues would have benefited from the characters interacting a bit more with each other, instead of taking turns monologuing.

Final very small nitpick, while I love the scene of Arthur remembering Robin and their time spent in the cabin, I can't help but wonder if it was maybe placed a bit too early in the narrative. Instead of immediately laying down the story's cards, I think it would have been more interesting to build up to that flashback.

It bears reiterating, I think you guys did an amazing job, this would be a 5/5 from me. I focused mostly on what IMHO could be improved because other than that I don't have much to say other than "Stunning work".

In the FVN circles I often hear people wishing this or that species was more represented. I think you gain points for unique species representation here: while snakes are already pretty rare, having the MC be a real size bee is an amazing choice. 

The art and the custom UI are simple but very effective, I'm impressed by what you were able to put together. The bee, in particular, is very cute, I love the small details like the wings flapping at varying speeds depending on the emotion being displayed. I think it also helped to deliver that amazing "bug" pun.

As far as the writing goes, I appreciate the brisk pacing, which leans on the visual elements instead of ignoring them to do its own thing. The dialogue feels pretty natural and has a snappy quality to it, but I think the writing, and the narration in particular, could use to be more daring. I noticed an overreliance on adverbs and dry utilitarian language that doesn't help to convey how a situation is supposed to feel. I think the clearest example of this is the transformation sequence: we are told afterwards by the protagonist about how emotionally affecting it was for them to witness it, and yet nothing in the prose really conveyed that when it was happening.

On a more fundamental note, I feel like the story so far lacks clarity of purpose. I really liked the little news sequences interspersed throughout the story, but it felt like they appeared at random points instead of seamlessly being part of the narrative. The story so far seemed to be more worried about establishing the characters, considering we spend a few days with them going through their normal lives, and yet I must admit I came out of the story with a very unclear idea of who these characters are as people. I wish the episodes being shown and the characters' interactions were a bit more illuminating about both their personalities and their relationships (sometimes it feels like they barely know each other, sometimes it feels like they are supposed to be close friends).

Finally, I was a bit confused by how the characters insist on remarking that something incredibly wrong and suspicious is going on in the city, but what we have witnessed so far hasn't really sold that idea to me. It feels like this conspiratorial train of thoughts is kicked off by a random vendor... being slightly rude to them. And it's capped by a transformation sequence that, while tragic, is presented as something that just happens in this world and it's normal. And yet the characters speak as if what they have witnessed so far  is so worrying that it's worth considering uprooting their lives and move to another city? I was really struggling at grasping the stakes here.

All in all, a very promising debut, but one I think could benefit from a second pass now that time isn't an issue anymore.

Hey everyone!

The Bear 🐻 and the Whale 🐋 have been published!

The Bird 🐦 and the Fox 🦊 will follow shortly.

Yes, it is allowed👍

Hello!

1. As long as you respect the conditions to use the sprites, you are free to submit your entry to another game jam as well. (You might want to make sure that's ok with the other game jam's rules, considering work on these sprites began some time ago, but that's for the other organizers to assess.)

2. You are free to work and submit more than one game.

These are very cool, thanks a lot to the both of you! :-) 🐻

Hello! In the FVN discord server, you can drop a message either in #looking-for-work (it's not a jam specific channel but it's all purpose, you can use it for that) or in the Novembear discussion post (which you can find under vn-discussion).

That server has a lot of people interested in making FVNs. Alternatively you can also just leave your contacts in a community post here on itch.io

Best of luck!

(Edited the post above as I got the months mixed up!)

Hello!

Anything that has to do with planning, ideas, gathering a team is fine.

As far as things like sketches and drafts go, I would encourage you to work on the project during the month of November only, as I feel like that's the spirit of a game jam. As long as nothing you worked on before the beginning of the jam ends up in your submission though, it's ok.

Hey, sorry for the delay!

There are no such restrictions, anything that is compliant with itch.io ToS is fine. As a courtesy to your readers, I'd recommend to make sure they're aware of what they're getting into!

Hello, thank you for the question!

We haven't created a tag for the jam yet. We'd be recommending to use #novemBEARjam , we'll be sure to use it as well in our future announcements. :-)

The beginning of the story gripped me pretty solidly! I like the writing and I like how story managed to avoid overwhelming exposition by starting the story medias res and filling in the details as you go. I feel the beginning and the protagonist's first dive into the Lovecraftian horror stand out as the most effective bits of the whole VN.

I do have to say though that the rest of the VN, while good, was not as strong as it could have been. I feel like, while the initial set up is great, the story struggles to justify its large wordcount in the later parts. In particolar, the characters feel a bit repetitive and flat after a while: I feel like the story is very effective at establishing their personality, conflicts, and so on, from the very first scenes, but then the story keeps repeating those same interactions and traits throughout without really bringing any kind of novelty about them?

I feel like this is very clear in particular in the two scene where the POV switches. I feel like despite being in these characters' heads, we don't really learn anything new? It kind of makes it feel like the two characters entire personality revolves around the protagonist and the protagonist's reading of them is so accurate there is nothing to add.

In terms of presentation, again the Lovecraftian nightmarish scene stands out as especially well executed, and the music/sound design (when it's present) it's pretty on point. However, there are plenty of points where the presentation is a bit plain: aside from the obvious points (sprite positioning and lack of music), I must say that I really felt that the atmosphere was a bit lacking in the scenes taking place on Earth after the horrors have been unleashed (this is not helped by all the jokes and casual banter the characters continue to exchange, it was really hard for me to tell sometimes if I was supposed to feel like the characters were in danger or not).

Overall, a pretty solid entry and first attempt at a VN, I'm definitely looking forward to reading more.