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Very fun aesthetic here. The platforming/enemy patterns are fair and it's easy to pick right up. I liked the music and spritework a lot!

Thank you so much for playing it!!

(Hi I'm Penelope.)

It's mostly because we didn't want to punish the player for guessing right by having them miss a substantial amount of content in the final scene! This game was a jam entry, so we didn't have the time or resources to really make the interactivity more than a gimmick.

But even from an in-character reason, there's a very good reason why Leila waits till the very end to pick that option:

<spoilers below, everyone!> 

...she's very much trying to rationalize away the truth/procrastinate a confrontation.

Re: the idioms, the one phrasing in one of the office logs that had struck me as particularly awkward was the line “They’re holding way too overkill of equipment for simple security so what are they here for? They seem particularly needed in the higher floors...”.

This sentence, as phrased, gets its meaning across and might even go unremarked upon as an off-the-cuff comment in a stream or a conversation at a bar, but it's actually extremely weird, uncommon and grammatically incorrect. The most egregious bit is ‘overkill’ being used as an adjective (‘way too overkill’ in the same way you might say ‘way too angry’). The word ‘overkill’ is actually an uncountable noun — you would never say “way too overkill”, and this speaks to my overall feelings about the way the dead characters articulate themselves in these logs; it's all very nondescript phrasing that an average civilian would use in a casual context, and not a clean-cut professional in upper management.

Like were it me expressing this sentiment (and mind you, I'm a military veteran but this would apply even if I were a normal office wageslave), I'd probably write the above sentence as something like “These guys are far too heavily-equipped to be normal security guards, so what are they even doing here? It seems they're being stationed in greater numbers on the upper levels...”. It's clearer, more specific. But that's just me.

I forgot to add, one thing I really liked about CotD is the UI design. The font choice really helps to make the action feel like it's being played on an old VHS tape and that really enhances the zombie movie feel of the VN.

Thanks again!

A visual novel with scripting this complicated must have taken so much time to QC. I am in awe and cringing a little bit in sympathy.

I got the true ending on my first time out with a minimum of save-scumming. I have not gotten the sole survivor ending but appreciate that it exists and might check it out later. I meant for this to be a longer comment because I feel like devs deserve long reviews but I'm finding myself incredibly wiped and my ADHD is not letting me do anything else until I finish this.

As a technical achievement this game is astonishing for a NaNoRenO release. The gameplay had some actual backbone to it compared to most VNs, too, which I appreciate. My favorite character by far was Tara because she's a girl but I liked Norman as well! The romance between him and MC is cute. My major qualm was that the script needed a bit of revision (‘your’ and ‘you're’ get mixed up several times, and some of the corporate apocalyptic logs are written in the same idiom the young characters speak in, which is incongruous), but it's a nice little game. Be proud!

This game is incredibly stylish and it has a good style. Love the character designs, too. Story-wise — I don't think this demo gives the narrative appropriate room to breathe. The protagonist's reaction to Lykos doesn't feel... I don't know. They get to flirty bantering really quickly and it's not always so clear why the MC should feel even as comfortable talking to this guy in a facility she just mysteriously woke up in. A lot of these things could probably be fixed up with another revision of the script. As a NaNoRenO project, it's interesting.

You're welcome! I do think you're doing something interesting with the whole mannequin conceit and the soul mates thing and would be curious if you ever elaborate on these elements.

Played the whole thing (thanks for the ending guide). I don't really know what I expected. The game is very surreal and weird, feeling more like a portrait than a story, because there's not any real narrative throughline so far other than “the three guys seem connected to each other somehow and have supernatural-ish powers maybe”. It's an inverted aesop vignette about hoping things go well and they go hilariously wrong.

My favorite route was the Quiet Guy because reality just completely breaks down in his routes. Like it's silly to the point of being endearing. Still, I don't think I was the target audience for this one.

This VN utterly gripped me. I'm usually kinda iffy about kinetic novels — they just don't scratch the right itch most of the time — but this may be one of my top three, and it's not even just because the transfeminine perspective absolutely fucking drips from the narrative. I immediately ran to recommend PINFEATHER to my friends the moment I finished it.

There were a lot of elements that had me feeling kind of uncertain early on, e.g., the general absence of music outside of, like, Silent Hill 2 sounds, and the monospaced font that looks like something out of a default RPG Maker game, but it quickly won me over. The relationship between February and Rhiannon is so dark and creepy and the ending is absolutely haunting in a way that will stick with me a while. Incredible work.

This game is technically, visually and musically excellent. The resources used — Elegant GUI, the Inline Tooltips, the Shaders, etc — are all not haphazardly thrown together but thoughtfully and elegantly deployed with an obvious measure of confidence and competence. The background images are kind of generic for the medium, but have been sufficiently stylized to match the intended character of the VN.

(I also immensely appreciate all the QoL, the 'this action will have consequences'-style the pop-up notifications, cluing the player into the anger–reason axis that affects the ending. This was made with a lot of consideration for UX and that means a lot. I don't like having to dig into a VN's scripts to figure out what I should be doing.)

The soundtrack is a banger, becoming intense when it needs to be, but most of the time it needs to be elegiac, because this is an extremely elegiac game. With how polished these tracks are, I honestly can't believe these were all finished up in a month! I thought before double-checking that these songs were another free resource. The murder scene in particular has a great beat. The scripting is also technically proficient, making the most out of a little to keep the screen busy and maintain appropriate emotional timbre.

The script is also really well-polished — almost immaculately edited, which is rarer for a VN than it should be, and I can tell it was written by someone who loves language. As for the writing itself, this is directed at the devs and not other prospective players so I'll put this behind spoilers:

The central conceit of this story rules. Haunting your murderer is a fun idea! A cute murder mystery/love story between the real Ethan and the MC as ghosts is a really cute idea, and I love the notion that, by getting to ask out the MC in the Justice ending, Ethan might cross over? Whereas the MC in the Revenge ending will always walk the earth, tethered by her now-unresolvable regrets (I'm just gonna use female pronouns here because I was a female playing the game). And the twist was great! I understood at the end why Jude and Ethan's designs closely resembled each other, which had been shaping up to be a criticism.

Where I ended up feeling unfulfilled a little was feeling the narrative led me down a garden path with Jude. Now: I can understand that Jude coveted Ethan's life and perception of academic excellence and murdered him for it, and then murdered the MC because she got too close to evidence of Jude's crimes. But there's some ostensible red herrings with Ethan having "discovered more about Ashenville than was taught in school" that don't seem to go anywhere, and other school IDs besides his own and Ethan's that Jude is noted to have stashed away in the morgue. Other victims?

It feels to me almost like more world-building had been composed for the narrative than the narrative actually needed, and so most of it was cut, but there's certain vestiges retained in the story? But altogether it just feels like Jude's final motivations are much too petty for how he was characterized throughout, and how guilt-ridden and emotionally traumatized he seems to be over the actions he committed. 

(For context: I had theorized while playing that Jude was being menaced by some demonic entity, and had been forced to kill people as blood sacrifices to said entity, similar to something in the old indie comic Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, and that he was seeing that demon-thing behind the MC and Ethan.)

I also just, like... don't know why Jude can see ghosts at all. Shouldn't he, like... not be able to do that? It's something that's not really explored by the narrative and maybe "less is more" is the right authorial attitude here but I would have liked to know more about this. Does murdering someone in this universe just make you perpetually able to see their ghosts? Is Jude some kind of medium, and is this why he's crazy? There's a lot here, and I would have liked seeing it addressed.

Some other quibbles:

• The sting that plays in the title screen is very nice, but I wish there was a longer, looping track, because reading the "About" page in silence is weird.

• I would have liked a Sound Test to sample all the tracks without having to dig through the game's directory, because these songs really are that good.

• The forest path is intuitive enough once you try all options, but left me feeling like I should have been able to know the correct route before getting there.

Anyway! It's a great time and you all should be proud. Thank you for making this!

This game isn't just a homage to Milk Inside a Bag of Milk Inside a Bag of Milk. It's literally, like, Great Value Milk Inside a Bag of Milk Inside a Bag of Milk. It's the version of that game that The Asylum would produce to mislead grandmas who wanted to play Milk Inside a Bag of Milk (in the event that such a thing were ever possible). 

This game is a sucking vacuum of creativity that takes every single one of its beats from that game and adds “edgier” dialogue, a vaguely The Oldest View/Backrooms-style premise, and an anecdote about animal cruelty. About the best I can say about it is that it does so competently. It's a technologically successful submission. The presentation is good. I don't think it lifts any assets. 

But the story and lack of acknowledgement about where all this art and narrative direction comes from, what obviously inspired every inch of this, was annoying.

No. He is literally the protagonist's twin brother.

Absolutely beautiful and atmospheric game that had strong characterizations and a wonderful, suffocating tension throughout. You can really feel Jazz at the end of her rope over the course of the story. The game uses to great effect many of Unity's advantages over Ren'Py, particularly in the UI.

The pacing of the story is a little abrupt at times and the true ending left me a little unsatisfied but the world-building was very good, the characters likeable, and while this is only the second NaNo2025 game I've played I'm also expecting it to remain one of my favorites going forward.

I saw the thumbnail icon (I don't actually know what we call those things) on the NaNo submissions page and I had to sate my curiosity.

Not wanting to spoil anything for any other players, I will affirm that this visual novel is exactly what it purports to be. I can't say I regret playing it.

Anyway, my belated congratulations to Shagamon on the whole Kate Upton/Megan Fox throuple.

EDIT: I should add that this experience has opened up my eyes to horizons I had not considered possible in NaNoRenO. I did not conceive that such a thing as this could ever exist and yet it exists in sheer defiance of my expectations.

This is definitely one of the best submissions to NaNoRenO 2022. I really enjoyed the banter between Davian and Kalle, the pensive worldbuilding and the beautiful, wonderfully consistent aesthetic of the whole VN. The game is perfectly well-paced and does a great job of justifying its conceit. Thank you so much for making this!

I enjoyed this experience! I did not realize it was a demo, since it was such a kinetic story, structured to my eyes something like Planetarian. The characters in this story are endearing and while I think this qualifies as a complete narrative in its own right I'd be happy to see more. Roslyn is a sweet, earnest centerpiece to the VN.

My one quibble is that in its present state it was a very visually static experience—I of course understand how complex art generation is, but I think even without creating/commissioning any custom assets, some more could be done with various effects to introduce more dynamism into the visual frame. But it's not a big deal, and honestly the story would have been intriguing even had you put it completely in NVL mode.

Great little VN! The music is beautiful and I think the narrative really succeeds in striking the tone it's going for.

It's easy to imagine how a great story like this could have been torpedoed by sloppy editing or simply a writer getting too ambitious for their ability, but the visual novel makes it clear that these are flawed, suffering, sympathetic characters who feel remorseful about the things they've done. The narrative doesn't reduce the characters to harping shrews or drunk pigheads and I appreciate that.

I really enjoyed this story, and the art (to say nothing of other polish like on the UI) is incredible. That the writing, art and coding were all done by one person when the whole thing feels more sleek and complete than many submissions to this jam that had whole teams just makes it seem all that more impressive an accomplishment. I really enjoyed this dramatic, claustrophobic VN and would recommend it to anyone.

This was a fun little story! Almost a science fiction murder mystery of sorts. I really enjoyed it! The writing is solid, the art is really cute and the vibe is cool and intriguing throughout. I just wish this release could have had some free music for tone, but that's a minor quibble.

This was raw as hell in a good way. Way too much of this hit close to home but that's fine. We're all just trying to survive in online spaces that are rapidly disappearing out from under us at accelerating rates. I especially like that most of the storytelling is in NVL format. I love chatlog stories and you're great at writing them!

The Game Over screen in this game is legendary.

I enjoyed this sweet slice-of-life game a lot! The art and the characters were both extremely endearing. Heartwarming indeed.

S'all good! I get beaten up by deadlines too. I hope you are able to finish this!

I said as much on the NaNo page, but: this was sweet and adorable, I loved it.

This was an adorable little story! The romance was sweet and Luci was an endearing character. A great jam submission.

Huh. This is a really intriguing demo. Obviously I wish there was more but as a proof-of-concept this is engaging. It's like a more wholesome DDLC in some regards. Good luck with the continued development of this VN; I'll be keeping an eye on this.

This was glorious. I just wish I could have made the Bride of Frankenstein's Catboy.

I have to admit I'm a little baffled by this narrative. The abrupt ending aside, it felt very unclear who Morelle was supposed to be, much less Gray, and the body swap(?) doesn't seem to have made Gray feel at all dysphoric or uncomfortable or seem remarkable to them at all outside of the changed social expectation of being a much more high-class person. I couldn't figure out what was going on here and I came away feeling frustrated.

I agree that this is a very calm and atmospheric game with a sense of sweetness. I love the retrovibe I do kind of wish the MC were developed more as a character but maybe that reflects some of the inherent limitations of the medium? It's still an engaging game. 

(Also I don't quite know what the game saving does.)

Fun little intentionally silly VN with a neat premise. There's some mild proofreading that could have been done to make the script more accessible, but this story has a good sense of humor and I appreciated its submission.

I don't think this VN should have been labeled as being simply a horror story. It's a fantasy-horror-romance with boys' love elements.

There's a lot of interesting ideas here, but the game would have benefited a lot from a proofreader, and the sprites could have been stored in such a way that they weren't cut off into ugly rectangles. Also, the "bad end"—they're all bad ends, really—felt utterly random. It didn't occur to me that it was meant to be an illusion until I actually poked into the script myself.

Still, it's a creative story. Right now I don't feel like it's accessible, but the broad strokes of what you did here are interesting!

Wow, okay, I loved this. The use of fine pens and watercolors to give an almost storybook vibe to what is effectively a mecha story about the aftermath of war made for an extraordinarily artistically successful juxtaposition, and the story being told here was compelling, with both characters being likable and coming into a reasonable impasse over the course of the narrative. All the transitional scripted effects just heightened the experience for me. I'm actually really intrigued by Last Shooting now, knowing it led to such a magnificent jam submission. Thank you so much for making this!

I needed a friend who had played Destiny 2 to help me make a little sense of some of the plot, but I absolutely loved this! The thought of someone doing a fanfiction project for NaNoRenO wasn't really anything I had expected but it's frankly brilliantly suited to a jam of this scope and size. 

The quality of this game is great—the UI and title screen look amazing, the art is phenomenal and very loyal to its inspiration, and the writing and characters are strong—Misneth is adorable and Hollie makes for a likeable protagonist. Even without being a fan of the Destiny games I was very glad to see this VN.

I hope this VN gets finished! I really like what I've seen of it so far. I'm guessing the MC is a trans girl?

This VN  still needs... a lot, obviously.

Even without a soundtrack (I just put the BRAID OST on in Spotify to make up for it), this is a nice little game. As someone with pretty severe depression and ADHD I can relate a lot to the protagonist. The little details like the email competently paint a picture of someone who is exhausted and hopeless. The central metaphor with the plant is also really strong! Good writing here.

Finally gave this little game a whirl and I found it highly amusing. Not only is the humor great, but this is a very technically impressive game for how small it is. Excellent use of Ren'Py for a very enjoyable half hour of my life.

Hi, Zelan. I was the assistant team lead for Beyond Yesterday's Grasp. Thank you so much for playing our VN.

The first thing you mentioned is not actually a glitch. The Surrender ending is not precluded by stopping Genevieve's killer—in fact, quite the opposite; it's impossible to get the Surrender ending without having done so. The transition between the ending and the preceding scene is indeed abrupt, however, and this will be addressed in a future update.

We've discovered from reader feedback that most people on track to get the true ending will instead get Surrender, mostly because they only choose options that acquiesce to Genevieve's demands. Without providing any spoilers in this space, I will say that your choices in the second and last sets of options are both pivotal to getting the true ending.

Thanks for commenting! I hope you'll get to see the other endings as well.