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Couldn't get into this one at all, unfortunately, though it does look and feel mostly competently put together. (Presentation nitpicks would include, among other things, the custom UI being very out of place with all the unchanged Ren'Py defaults – at least use the same font everywhere.) I feel like the VN just doesn't recover from the story going all in on a conceit that hasn't felt fresh in a long time and overpowers the basic genre pleasures with self-consciously hokey plotting, bathos interrupting every dramatic moment, and characters whose fates it's difficult to get invested in.

More precisely, the character voices are really weak (it feels like any character in this could say any line), and combined with the character designs and the expressionless sprites not conveying a lot of personality, I initially had some trouble with even remembering who was who. It's weird because the cast is full of recognizable caricatures – the horror buff, the obnoxious arthouse snob, etc – you'd think would, if nothing else, be easy to distinguish from each other.

I guess this is partially a result of the degree to which the metacommentary informs everyone's characterization. Joy never feels more like a fully-formed person than just a riff on the concept of the final girl, Oliver comes off as nothing but a parody of romance protagonists who doesn't even have much of a reason to exist in this story, and so on. Comedy can survive characters who don't come with a lot of psychological depth, but not them only feeling like gestures towards archetypes rather than compelling, vibrant, nuanced embodiments of them.

The prose feels similarly half-hearted at times. I remember one scene where a character stops for a "terrible moment" to regard the killer's "terrifying mask" and "wicked, long knife" – there are a lot of adjectives telling us that what's happening is scary, but is it actually tense to read? I get that all the slasher stuff is ultimately mostly played for laughs, but I think all the jokes would land better if the writing was more confident with its tone modulations and managed to generate actual tension, too. With this kind of thing, I feel like it's really about comedy and horror building each other up, but here the horror is throughout too muted to accomplish that.

On the whole, I think it's a case of "way less than the sum of its parts". The sprite art is not bad to look at out of context, and I liked some gags even while finding most of the referential stuff a bit cheap. Still, the comedy is not strong enough to be the main attraction, and there's not much else to enjoy when the game feels more interested in everything it wants to parody and make fun of than actually telling a story.

In general I liked this a lot, but as the "submitted 9 minutes, 5 seconds before the deadline" feels spiritually true especially towards the end, I think I want to wait for a post-jam update before doing a more thorough reread and gathering my thoughts properly. In lieu of a more polished review, please accept some scattered notes:

– I think it took me until hearing that the author was inspired by Kentucky Route Zero before the magical realist touches fully clicked in place. The idea is good regardless, but the execution is maybe not as graceful as in the inspiration, which provides a much smoother on-ramp to the really surreal elements. The progression from the mine to the bureau to the museum to the distillery and so on feels very intentional in how it teaches the player what kind of stuff to expect and how to read it in relation to the game's societal themes. With this game, I can see some readers struggling with how fast and with how little setup we're dropped into an absolutely wild concept – I almost feel like it's something the story should either open with or build more gradually towards (maybe the ballet could also be weird and magical in some way, or something).

– I've seen others remark on the main couple's lack of chemistry, which I think is a good observation and ultimately very true to life. It reminded me of Joanna Hogg's The Souvenir duology (which are some of my favorite movies ever, so take this as praise) in how the story basically just takes the fact that these two are dating at face value without really attempting to narrativize or explain it. The vibe is that of a loosely recalled memory.

– I love all the art, and I think the art direction stays together pretty well, too. It's one of those VNs where even the stock image backgrounds feel like they were curated with care. Besides further customizing Ren'Py's default UI – which never does much favors to any sort of story – I think something representing an area of improvement would be logo design: the text logo is a noticeable weak part in the otherwise attractive itch cover image. It's only this kind of small stuff that makes it feel like the game is 95 % instead of 100 % of the way to looking fully polished visually.

– The pacing is not slow, but it's maybe slower than it could or should be mostly due to the journey to Cygnus's memories being nonlinear but not really compensating with any other way to make it feel like we're making constant progress. I don't mind that the department exists as little more than a way to make the story happen in principle, but I think there's maybe a missed opportunity to get more specific about what exactly Erin is doing there and why to give the events some shape and sense of urgency.

– On the character design front, I think the game strikes an excellent balance between making Cygnus look sort of ethereal and mystical (as if they were already a ghost) but not too out of place with the other characters.

Okay, so, there are good ideas: I like the unusual structure and that the story uses its zombie apocalypse conceit to deliver what essentially amounts to a tragedy rather than tense action, and the comic-esque visuals are fun. I think the TV motif is ultimately a bit messy, though, as the name recalls linear TV but the meta material revolves around movies the protagonist has watched on VHS – which, speaking of, feels very anachronistic since some details point towards a present-day setting? I didn't really get what point was being made here.

There are some issues in the technical execution that ultimately made the VN a little hard to enjoy. Firstly, the engine is very rudimentary, which is somewhat hard to stomach when the game doesn't really do anything so experimental that Ren'Py wouldn't work. The UI is unattractive, there's missing functionality (saves would be nice to have even in such a short story), and most brutally, the story can only be advanced with the dedicated Next button. Readers who like smashing Space or clicking wherever at their leisure are in shambles...

The writing is not bad, but the prose feels very unconfident as a result of relying on so many external tricks, such as the overuse of blank "..." lines to set the rhythm and all the colored and formatted text. Some parts come off as a bit wordy (don't need to explain that lowering your phone's brightness saves battery) and repetitive: when Kiel discovers the woman, for example, the narration notes "This is Kiel's first corpse" (a good line that would survive removing the pointless bolding) but repeats the thought later with "He's never seen a dead person before". There are enough of these kinds of issues and clunky lines that it does feel like the script could have used more editing.

Still, to reiterate, the fundamental concept is good, and I think the presentation showcases good talent for visual storytelling. Looking forward to what the creators make next!

On the whole, I'm a bit torn; there are some things that I think are fantastic, and some things I don't think quite worked for me in the way the game was aiming for.

The idea of getting a lot of prominent FVN musicians to make in-universe songs is honestly excellent and a perfect representation of the kind the communal creativity that makes these game jams so fun. I think they could maybe have been used in the game better (only the one the protagonist's band sings really feels essential for the story, and the final two happen pretty close to each other), but I love the concept with all my heart and would say that the songs themselves are very good, too. Good job, everyone!

Writing-wise, the primary thought I'm left with is that the structure, the pacing, and the scope don't feel like they serve the story being told. The game is going with a musical biopic-esque thing where we track the band's rise and fall through the years, but the execution falters: there's a lack of a clear central thread to give the events shape, and in general, I don't think every decision about what to show and what to leave out works. This is most easily seen in the fact that after every time jump, the narration has to do a lot of exposition to catch up with what has happened since the last time we saw the characters – if that stuff is the important part, shouldn't we be watching it play out? Moreover, unlike all those biopics that barrage the viewer with facts about singles, albums, and concerts, we don't get a clear sense of how the band is doing and how everything affects their art, and as a result, it feels like we're barely familiar by the time they're already breaking up.

The segment where the pacing comes off as the least rushed is probably the beginning – the character interactions can actually breathe there – but, ironically, I also think that it's likely the least essential. Much of what happens there feels like something that could be safely exposited later: seeing Everett and Curtis meet is nice in theory, but Everett's one-sided crush doesn't make for a lot of dynamic character drama. I'm not a fan of everything the beginning chooses to spend time on detailing, either (the homophobic dad and the asshole store owner feel like stock characters the game doesn't do anything interesting with) but I do like that there's a lot of historical context about what's happening with music.

On the other hand, the ending is maybe the most fast-paced part, coming with a lategame genre shift that I think doesn't fully materialize emotionally or add a lot to how the game previously talked about addiction. I can't say whether it's too big of a swing in principle, but at least with how it reads right now, I was basically too baffled and surprised to get anything else from it. I wonder if it would work better as a framing device than a twist?

I do like a lot about the art, with the caveat that I'm not sure if the art direction fully comes together with so many distinct styles and some small stumbles. Not all assets that are fine on their own look good when put together: for example, some of the sprites (Curtis's first sprite especially) have colors so muted that they risk disappearing in the backgrounds full of bright tones and stark contrasts. Also, I think it adds to the character drama feeling a bit stilted that the sprites have no variation in expressions but are stuck in dramatic poses that convey a lot of emotion. When Curtis is on the screen all hunched over and reserved and shy, there's a big disconnect with reading about him arguing and shouting. Again, the art is not bad in the slightest bit, but I feel like many pieces don't fully account for the entire story context in which they appear.

This all being said, I know how it is with game jams, and I can see a lot about how the VN is like now arising from a rush to get it completed by the deadline. In any case, congrats for finishing it, and good luck to the team with whatever changes may be planned for after the jam!

The somewhat unpolished prose full of strange phrasing is probably the only big impediment to enjoying this. There's a sense that the game is sometimes being weird on purpose and sometimes by accident, and the difference isn't always easy to tell; I think I only got that the protagonist was genuinely meant to be saying a lot of offbeat stuff during my second read. A lot of worldbuilding is conveyed implicitly, too, which would be way easier to stomach if the writing felt more purposeful with its lack of clarity. (Just a random example of the kind of thing I mean: the game uses "young witch" to mean "new witch", which initially made me believe the characters were like 13; I think that sense of the word is too old-fashioned to really fit the voice.)

But the story is not bad, though it comes off as a bit hurried as a result of the central hunt for the lost cat being scarce with twists and turns and a lot of the game just being drama between witches. The world is interesting enough, too, especially given its inspirations in a meme. There's a lot of intriguing stuff the plot doesn't even really touch, like witches apparently doing jobs for the community like in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon. If there's a missed opportunity, it's probably the protagonist's curse never coming up – by the time the story gets to the buck, the reader probably understands that there's something special going on with every witch, and it just feels like a Chekhov's gun that never fires. I recall your idea for what it would have been from the stream, and I think that would have been an excellent closing gag or something.

Art-wise, it's all nice and charming, and the character designs convey a lot of personality. I'm maybe not completely on board with everything happening with the UI (the font is pretty small, and using it to hide content on purpose maybe feels too janky), but it's nice to see experimentation. I will say that since the game is all NVL mode, it would have been nice to see the writing take advantage of that as well with longer paragraphs and novel-esque flow of prose.

To be honest, this primarily feels pretty chaotic. There's a lot of weird stuff happening in the presentation: italics used all over the place for seemingly no reason, the low-quality JPG backgrounds, speakers vs. the narrator used inconsistently, all the text colors, the jarring transitions in the opening NVL section, not to mention it being a bit odd to use NVL in the first when all the paragraphs are pretty short and the writing is still VN-esque... It's a bit difficult to connect with the story when there are so many things fighting for your attention.

Not that the story is terrible, mind you. There's a clear arc that happens, although it does feel like most of the game is just stalling by withholding information about the breakup – when the characters actually talk to each other, everything happens quickly and neatly. Also, the variations in style and tone are about as wild as everything happening visually, with the writing going from poetic imagery to satan's frozen asshole basically in an instant. There is some nice mood-setting throughout, however.

I do like the art (the diner scene is a big standout) and the music, though some variation in the audio design wouldn't hurt. There are a lot of good ingredients in play, and it feels a bit unfortunate that the result is so messy in multiple ways that it sort of overwhelms the entire reading experience.

Well, there's a lot to like. I dig most of the character designs, and the initial exorcism scene is surprisingly tense. The story moves fast (though the part with all the POV switches starts to feel repetitive as the characters encounter basically the same situation) and ends with a climax that knows how to craft a memorable image. Even if I have my reservations about how well it all works out in the end emotionally and thematically – the revelation is maybe too little too late, especially for a game calling itself psychological horror – the final sequence is simply stunning.

More negatively, the character voices don't feel particularly distinct, and everyone speaking pretty formally doesn't help. I like how wild the filtered backgrounds look in theory, but the effect is stark enough to clash with the muted style of the sprites, which some lighting effects might help with.

Meanwhile, the big character design elephant in the room is the lion. I like the concept, but the wig/prosthetic mane looks, sorry to say, quite bad. It's a mix of a lot of issues, I think: the unshaded, monocolor style would probably not be kind to it regardless, the oddly flat shape makes it look like it's floating around the character's head, I'm confused by what the messy linework is implying, the proportions do not look right at all (both the neck fluff and the top part are very thick), and in general it only resembles a lion's mane in a very abstract sense. So sorry to harp on what might ultimately be a pretty inconsequential issue, but our transmasc king deserves better... I was hoping the game would end with everyone going on an urgent shopping trip and getting him a better mane...

Beyond a shadow of a doubt the best combined demon porn visual novel/used underwear collection resource management sim ever made. I feel like a hypocrite for having enjoyed it as much as I did because the polish issues (like said simulation minigame being bugged in basically every way it could be) are quite outstanding, but the truth in my heart is that I loved basically every second.

For something that doesn't outwardly advertise itself as comedy, it's incredibly funny and perfectly in control of its tone. The author has grown very confident with his particular flavor of understated absurdity, or maybe a sex-focused game just happens to be an environment where it can flourish better than ever. The underwear minigame almost feels like a mission statement – the game classily acknowledges the weirdness of the situation but nevertheless takes it seriously enough to force the player to contemplate the stakes at play. To put it simply, all the wild shit that happens in this, and specifically how it happens, endears me so much.

Humor emerges as a strength on the level of prose, too; there are more killer lines than I can count (WHO PUTS LOINCLOTHS IN F TIER), and the sense of comedic timing is superb. In hindsight, the surreal undercurrent the flowery writing maintains throughout colors the otherworldly sex scene in a pretty interesting way – or, at the very least, feels more appropriate here than in the author's other works that were more focused on human drama. Speaking of, the references to Bear My Breath came off as a bit pandering, but I can't complain because I enjoyed them every time.

What else is there to say... Jerbear outdid himself with some very nice art; the audio design is a bit sparse for my liking; the biggest issue in the presentation is probably Ren'Py's crude default controls making it very hard to tell if you've actually enabled the kinks or not. You really want a clear on/off toggle for this kind of thing. The story is light, but that doesn't strike as a big weakness in a porn game, which is maybe something I would say about the piece on the whole – we can excuse a bit of expository dialogue, since it's just how these things work.

That's what matters, really: for all its weird, creative ideas, I think the game succeeds at what it's trying to do, though I'll let the smegma/watersports fandom make a closer appraisal of the erotic elements. I was here mostly for the offbeat sex comedy, and I enjoyed it a lot.

Some nitpicks: the sprites look way too small, transitions are maybe a bit too fast in general, and though the minimalism compels me in a big way, I think the car trip portion could have used more frequent background changes to mark the point where the story opens up both in terms of geography and character psychology. But in the same breath, I will say that the unique, evocative presentation does feel strong enough to excuse a couple of rough edges.

Even better, the script is simply excellent. It does feel a bit lengthy for what it is on paper, but there are enough nice details and payoffs throughout to create the impression that things are happening constantly. The POV shift halfway through is a smart move; as a slight curveball, it gives the plot a lot of momentum, and changing the roles like that feels like an essential piece for getting the most out of the voyeuristic premise. The prose is exceptionally good, too. There are a lot of sharp lines, the voices establish themselves very fast, and it plays with the sense of being narrated in a way that's always a pleasure to see.

On the whole, very good. It's 50 % fresh ideas and 50 % rock-solid craft – basically everything you would want from a game jam submission.

A nice enough read. It's a very Trans 101 story (though given some intrigue by the furry worldbuilding angle) where the only thing that maybe feels off to me is the naming choice. I found it a bit weird to have even the options where the protagonist goes "all the way" with the name change to be alternate versions of her deadname – maybe it's a cultural difference, but I don't think doing that is super common around here.

I'm also not completely sure what the choice adds to the story in general, which feels like a running theme with some devices the game uses. The plot branches into two routes near the end, but apart from simply showing different events play out as the main character hangs out with a different friend, I'm not really sure how they complement or enhance each other. I didn't get the sense that the game had a specific thing it wanted to do with the juxtaposition of the branches. NVL mode comes off as a bit carelessly deployed, too – the transitions to and fro feel abrupt every time, and again, I'm not sure what using it accomplished beyond the game being able to fit longer paragraphs on the screen. (Also, stuff was sometimes happening under the overlay while the game was stuck in NVL mode.) I think a good area of improvement would be trying to be more purposeful with different aspects of the medium: why NVL mode? Why two routes? Why the name choice? How can these things be made to serve the story being told?

Besides that, I appreciate the decision to not go too far into melodrama, but the protagonist's trepidation about coming out to her friends almost feels too lowkey, or maybe just not rich enough in good details to really convey the specificity of her feelings. The prose is generally confident, but in scenes like that, I think you can maybe sense the writer being a bit hesitant about how to approach the subject matter and preferring to play it safe.

It is (with very minor choices)

On the negative side, there is a decent amount of game jam jank and unfinished stuff in basically every aspect, but that is to be expected with these things. I think the VN is ultimately more enjoyable than not, with the biggest thanks going to all the nice art and the smooth plotting.

As slice-of-life/romance, the game gains a lot from the vivid specificity with which the characters are sketched. I mean, the premise is a French forest ranger on vacation courting a radio host through their shared interest in retro tech – there's a lot of detail in there, and though I'm not familiar enough with all this stuff to speak for realism, all of it is described in an interesting, lifelike manner. It's also simply neat that there's a lot of different stuff happening. A lesser VN would be satisfied with using only one of the concepts explored here as its defining gimmick, but Wild Antler FM feels like a complete package due to its instinct to flesh out both the protagonist and the love interest and its sense of time & place.

Another excellent decision is writing the central romance as, essentially, a hookup. It's appropriate for the scope – there may not be enough words to work with for the characters to form a deep emotional connection in an organic way – and represents a welcome tendency to approach queer romance by gently pushing on genre boundaries. The fact that sex is a large part of what drives these characters to each other means that them getting it feels like a good conclusion, too, though the door is of course left open for their relationship to develop in other ways.

The story is all good, really; my only real complaints are editing issues with the prose, most notably many lines not reading like natural English, and some audiovisual stuff I think the team is already planning to address. The game felt like a pleasant read on the whole, and I'm saying this as someone who's not the biggest fan of the genre to begin with.

So, okay, I get that we're going for "intentionally amateurish" vibes here. I'm not the one to deny the pleasures of this kind of thing, but I think there are two very different modes of doing it: 1) using it as a license to make something absurd, unconventional, and over-the-top beyond what's acceptable even in humorous stories 2) using it as an excuse to not try very hard. Most of this, I think, has more to do with category 2.

On the whole, I feel like the VN just doesn't go far enough to really amuse. Every social interaction is weird (most conversations go like this: "Want to have sex?" "Sure.") and the banging scenes have a hint of surrealism (that is NOT how prostates work), but both the plot and the character drama feel understated. All the different elements don't work super well together, either – Buck taking a physical form feels out of place as the only clearly supernatural element. The pixel art, too, isn't really that charming or funny; it's just sort of bad to look at.

It's all pretty functional and competent. The sprite animations feel like an efficient form of characterization, and the writing doesn't have outstanding flaws.

I guess the primary thing on my mind is this: The fact that there appears to be nothing interesting or distinctive about the protagonist's life is genuinely pretty bleak in a way that certainly stands out as a bold artistic choice. He works at a nondescript office job, gets the most generic takeaway ever (chicken and... mashed potatoes??? did i forget already), has a roommate we don't learn much about and who comes off as a cordial but somewhat distant friend, and the evening's big surprise is sitting down and playing some well-known NES titles.

While I recognize the fact that the story wants to be a documentaristic portrayal of an ordinary guy's life, I think that last thing in particular pushes things pretty far towards mundane and generic. Coming up with fake games might have helped give the story and the memories it wants to convey a sense of specificity – like this, it just feels like the characters are playing Mario. Everything is sort of so real it comes off as collective cultural memory instead of a person's childhood experiences, if that makes sense.

Anyway, I'm sure you could argue that the choices the VN makes result in something interesting. I guess my concern is mostly whether we lose the genre pleasures of slice-of-life in the process. The tone is just so somber and the story so devoid of engaging details that even the escapist return to memories of better times hardly feels like a relief.

Though I must confess that this largely didn't work for me, I think it was going to be a hard sell regardless; I find it to be rich in the kind of bordering-on-overwrought sentimentality & didacticism that most often turns me off.

To be more precise, I think the script has a habit of resisting ambiguity, complexity, and subtlety, pushing as hard as it can on whatever emotion it wants to convey,  sometimes even to contradictory ends. The protagonist arrives at the hospital conveniently in time to witness the subsequent deaths of his baby sister and mother, but later has a mystifying guilt nightmare about having supposedly abandoned them, which feels like it would maybe make more sense in a version of the story where he tragically misses the entire thing. There's a running theme with Ransom being prone to violent impulses, but his outbursts only ever target people who might as well as be marked as ontologically evil, and as such, it barely feels like anything worthwhile is said about the thorny intersection of violence, masculinity, justice, and retribution. (And, sorry, but it's kind of wild to me that the game turns it into a lesson of "If you're willing to show your heart, you will find yourself capable of wonderful things.")

But even outside of those cases, it's all just a lot. Almost every social situation is about the protagonist's insecurity and awkwardness; the way nature is described always seems to stress its beauty; the first encounter with the love interest is initiated with the narration noting "I can't explain it, but I feel like something's... pulling me towards him." A single detail that struck out to me as very telling is the dad's shitty replacement Thanksgiving dinner pizza being specifically described as "stale" and "disgusting" – is the situation not disappointing enough by itself? Does the pizza also have to bad? To me, all this stuff makes it harder, not easier, to arrive at the emotional response the game seems to be expecting.

That being said, I found a lot of the prose to be pretty good. The conversational, casual first-person narrator works well, and I think the descriptions avoid ever getting so flowery that they would feel out of place with it. It does make it easy to notice how much the author's own voice bleeds into how the characters speak – there's a lot of "huh" and "how about that" – which I think represents a possible area of improvement. Editing-wise, the writing is impressively clean for a game jam project without an external editor, though the narrowness of the vocabulary leads into some gratuitous repetition. As an example, the word "story" occurs in literally every paragraph of the opening narration, sometimes even multiple times.

Visually, good job with the presentation; the UI is basic but functional, and there's some sharp typography in the logo design and the credits. I'm not sure how much this has to do with the art being simply unfinished, but a weakness that stands out is many characters having similar faces, poses, and angles – all in all, it doesn't feel like the sprite art conveys much individuality. Also, in a game about photography, I think it's maybe a bit of a shame that the filter for the backgrounds is so overpowering.

In total, I do think I maybe enjoyed this more than the last thing by the creator that I read, or at least thought that my problems had more to do with personal taste than craft this time. I'm sure this will find its fans, and I wish the author good luck with future projects!

Cute! The lovely presentation with the charming sprites and a hint of friendly skeuomorphism adds a lot; it's one of those visual novels that announce themselves right in the title screen. Though I have somewhat mixed feelings about how voice acting works in this medium on the whole, I think it feels like an essential piece here as an extra layer of characterization that helps you get a sense of who everyone is with the story's short length.

Speaking of which, if there are criticisms to be made, I think there are some kind of curious choices with structure and pacing. The cast is large for something this short – the main arc you can identify involves the protagonist and Tibbs, but we spend a lot of time on getting to know everyone else (though the diary framing device expedites things somewhat) with little payoff. Even if the genre sort of excuses it, the dramatic incident that occurs close to the end is left feeling quite brief and weightless, too. I do wonder if a more focused approach would have helped give the final beat more of an impact.

I think it maybe has less to do with individual lines or scenes and more with just the general vibe of how the different elements are handled.

For example: the kidnapping, although something that would be a serious thing in reality, registers as a joke because the tone is nonchalant. It's over-the-top and exaggerated. In contrast, the social commentary feels like it presents bad situations that happen in real life almost as-is, notably in spite of many of the characters being mythological & otherworldly creatures you could also imagine being out of touch with human culture or bigoted in some kind of more caricaturish way. I don't want to give feedback that goes too far in the "you should have done this" zone, but I can imagine the incubus having no idea asexuality was a thing working as a gag, for instance. A lot of it doesn't feel like the game manages to translate the subject matter into the language of comedy (though I like some of the jokes that come up, like the repetitiveness of how everyone responds to Credence revealing his orientation).

I do think comedy of this sort, where you want to interweave a serious point with some extremely absurd events, is very hard to write in general, though! I hope the feedback you've gotten has felt useful!

When the comedy lands, it lands – I think many of the tonal shifts and abrupt escalations of absurdity provide good results, and the visual gags are strong. The joke density doesn't feel super high, however, and I think a lot of comes down to the story stumbling a little as tries to find a good balance between humor and delivering its serious message.

On a basic level, the premise is quite ridiculous, sort of a tumblr post-esque mythological reinterpretation. That's all good, but I'm not sure if it really works with the game otherwise mostly defaulting to grounded human drama. For example, the protagonist largely plays the role of the straight man; you could get a good comedy of misunderstandings out of an incubus (who's pretty bad at his job) attempting to seduce an oblivious ace guy, but what happens is instead mostly mundane acephobia. The social commentary and the supernatural bits don't really match each other in intensity or register, which exacerbates the tonal unevenness and makes the happy ending a bit hard to swallow, too. Like, damn, do we really want to forgive these guys? As the game points out, their behavior would be creepy and beyond acceptable even if they weren't harassing an asexual person who's not into them – I wouldn't care in a story that was more irreverent in general, but with how serious this one gets at times, it feels weird to go from kidnapping to everything being fine.

On the presentation side, as already mentioned, I think the visual jokes work really well even if there isn't anything crazily experimental. I do appreciate the basic pleasures of moving sprites around in a funny way. There's a lot of good audio design, too, and the use of music takes the genre into account in a way that's surprisingly rare in this space.

Hey, thanks for the comment! Let me follow up on the technical issues:

1) I can't reproduce the mouse issue on my own machine; the feel is similar to Ren'Py with both an external mouse and my laptop's integrated one (though I notice the latter is sort of wonky to use with both). If you happen to have some kind of unusual setup, it would be helpful to have more details!

2) How the sliders work turns out to be really unintuitive for this game in particular, since the engine thinks of the classification as being looping vs. non-looping, and by coincidence most of the music ends up in the latter category and most of the other stuff in the first. I'm reworking this whole thing for an upcoming project and will probably just get rid of the separate sliders altogether, since the music vs. sound effect distinction is not entirely clear and doesn't really capture how I approach audio design in a super useful way regardless.

The vibes are lovely and I like a lot of what's happening here, but I think the story might ultimately be too hazy and scattered to really land.

A lot of this is the result of following a protagonist who's asking himself many of the questions raised by the premise (why does he want to leave? how will he survive? what fate awaits him?) without getting much in terms of resolution from the abrupt ending. Or am I just failing to parse the dense symbolism? The transhumanism as transition & self-actualization angle is clear, but as central of a puzzle piece as it comes off as, I'm not quite sure what to make of the blood = oil equivalence. In any case, I don't mind the story being abstract and mysterious, but I feel like it lacks that important moment when everything comes together at least on an emotional or aesthetic level.

On the level of prose, this does feel more solid than the previous game by this team that I read, but the constant grammar errors and instances of strange phrasing impose a barrier that makes the script a difficult one to get into. With all the sentence fragments and the wonky punctuation, many lines just don't flow well even if their meaning is clear enough, and the character voices don't feel distinct because these issues affect all of them. The artistry of the writing is ultimately hard to appreciate.

Visually, there are a lot of disparate elements I'm not quite sure what to make of. The sprites are charming, but the characters being dressed in neutral contemporary clothing maybe doesn't feel fully congruent with the vibe of the Resort or the setting at large, since a lot of emphasis is placed on the lost previous world. The retro tech angle, too, is a little jarring with the rest of the plot involving amazing science fiction technology. Especially with all the writing stuff discussed earlier, I think the game would have benefited from strong art direction that immediately tells you how to feel about the world and the story in general, but I don't think that is quite there.

It's linear and relatively short

An incredibly wild read in a way that honestly renders both the didactic content and the character drama a little hard to buy into. Though the breakneck pacing isn't the only thing to blame, it certainly stands out: several flashbacks are only some text boxes long, and the characters are forced to say a lot of expository dialogue to keep the reader up to speed with how fast the plot happens. It epitomizes things pretty well that the entire plot element of the main couple's child turning out intersex and them opting not to do surgery takes, what, 5 lines of dialogue in total?

On a deeper level, as the game is in such a hurry to move forward, the protagonist only ever comes off as a vessel for his issues. While I don't think there's any ill intent in what the game does, it feels like there's a narrative piece missing with him being a trans man who the other characters have to teach to care less about how the biology of reproduction affects his standing as a man and as a father. He's a type of person who definitely exists in the world but feels undercharacterized here – I would have liked to see both the flashbacks and the present-day story explore his relationship with gender & masculinity in more detail. It's kind of like... are we just observing a guy learn a lesson or making him a character with interiority, history, and agency? (Well, two lessons, since he's also the one getting schooled about corrective surgery on intersex babies.)

Though the art is said to be incomplete, I would rate the sketchy backgrounds as pretty nice to look at as is, and the limited color palette is a functional artistic choice. I like the sprites less: all the main character's expressions look off-model with each other, and I don't understand what's going on with his partner's sprite being like 50 % of his height. 

Though the execution isn't perfect, points for 1) being an actual working GameBoy submission and 2) telling a short but complete story.

To elaborate on both: making the engine in just a month (or, apparently, even less than that) is an impressive feat, but the ergonomics feel unpolished. I have mixed feelings about the inability to make text scroll faster; intentional or not, it works as an artistic choice to establish a set reading rhythm that the jumpscares then interrupt, and might not be a huge issue for a game of this length anyway. Presentation of text is pretty rough even by GB standards, however. The font leaves a lot of horizontal space between letters while pushing lines against each other vertically, and only having two of those to work with means that most paragraphs have to be split across multiple text boxes. The UI is tiny even in comparison to the average visual novel – I think you could safely dedicate more screen estate to the writing.

As for the story, considering the word count and the submission looking like it's more focused on the novelty of a GameBoy FVN, I feared it would be very barebones. However, the game manages to channel creepypasta energy in a way that makes its brevity feel purposeful – actually, I feel like things could go even further in that direction, since some of the more traditional VN elements come off as out of place. I'm not sure if the roommate's presence really adds anything, for example, and at the same time, the monster remains pretty vaguely sketched for being the central horror element in a horror story.

Even though the game comes off as a bit tongue-in-cheek, the claustrophobic, heavily stylized GameBoy presentation and the pixel gradients do evoke a mood. It's a nice experience for what it is.

Oh okay, no problem, was wondering if something like that might be the case! Should be fine if you re-export with lossless webp compression!

A pretty compelling comedic entry. While some of the dating culture jokes in the beginning are sort of hit-or-miss, the protagonist's obliviousness to his AI boyfriend is a good comedic core that only gets better the harder the story leans on it. The humor is only partially genAI satire, the rest being classic "robot misunderstands human language" mishaps, but there are gags that land in both categories, and I do think it works to make the game feel like it's not trying too hard to be topical.

Structure & pacing are good all around – the opening in particular is a really fun and efficient way to introduce the conflict – apart from the climax, which feels like it runs out of steam in a pretty big way. Though there are a lot of delightful ideas, instead of coming to some sort of ultimate escalation of absurdity or final punchline, the action just ends very abruptly. The part that follows is also maybe a bit heavy with explanations for why all this happened, given a lot of the information isn't really super intriguing. It feels like the game gets too caught up in clearing the stage for the final beat and tying up loose ends to deliver an ending that feels satisfying instead of just the logical next step, and the outline could probably have used some iterating.

Visually, there's enough of a coherent style despite the sprites from all the different jam artists and plenty of good ideas (the "light in the dark" scene is pretty striking) with one pretty noticeable issue: the aggressive image compression artifacts. The game appears to be using lossy .webp files, which is really an unnecessary optimization in a project of this kind, a small one-off VN the reader will likely play once and then delete from their computer. I'd rather have crisp image quality than a slightly smaller size on disk.

With the jam submission seemingly only being a very, very short teaser, not much can be said about the story. I guess it's true that it doesn't start with a strong hook; not much about how the apocalyptic scenario is described or how it plays out feels particularly unique or interesting, and with how little context we get so far, it's a struggle to connect with the characters. Actually, the whole Day 1 segment comes off as kind of extraneous – I don't think the game gets a lot from going through the motions of the protagonist preparing for the journey instead of just starting with them on the road.

There are plenty of nice visual touches, and the opening sequence manages to strike a mood, but it's all a bit too much sometimes. The formatting is especially aggressive in a way that hurts more than it helps. It's not really necessary for a word to be simultaneously bold, italic, and in quotes, and I didn't get the significance of a lot of the narration being centered.

For all the bells and whistles, I think the VN would benefit from being more confident as a piece of writing and letting its prose and dialogue drive the story. It just feels too often that how text is presented is more of a concern than what it says.

Not a bad read! Though there's apparently more to come, I feel like the story works pretty well as a vignette even now. Many worldbuilding details will presumably be fleshed out and paid off in what is set to follow, but other plot points – like the protagonist's sick mother, or his academic exploits – do come off as interesting context for the characters and the drama between them. It's honest slice-of-life but well enough paced and structured to avoid the worst pitfalls of the genre.

On the other hand, I feel like the prose could use some further polishing; many lines feel kind of clunky and labored. At the risk of getting too nitpicky, let me pull out an example of what I'm talking about: "Finally passing through the gate, I try and estimate the amount of time I have left before my first lectures at the academy begin." First of all, I think "try and estimate" sounds less natural than the more obvious choice "try to estimate", and "the amount of time" is sort of a heavy phrase – "how much time" or some other rewording would probably work better.

Also, for a narrative that feels like it wants to evoke a strong sense of setting, I think it doesn't really push the descriptions far enough. Though the writing pulls off the mechanical delivery of information, the sensory experience of what it feels like to live in this world is not painted sharply enough to really elevate the worldbuilding. The tangible physicality of the character interactions is good, however; it feels like the game pays attention to all the correct things there.

But even if the presentation is not without its issues – the sprites jumping around as a result of some expressions being misaligned, for instance – I would call the art the VN's strongest aspect overall. There's a lot of it (the opening sequence is so charming!), and it's erotic in a sort of classically romantic way that fits the relatively restrained story. Though there is some rougher and less refined stuff in there, it feels like nailing expressions and anatomy was a priority, and it works out fantastically. It's just pleasant to look at all around.

Thanks for your comment! Won't be any trouble at all to add those controls; I'll do that for the planned polish release.

Thanks for your kind words about the sound design – I spent many hours with my girlies FreeSound and Audacity trying to make it complement the story and Pink's beautiful work on the OST!

In case you're curious about what the intent was with the ending, more thoughts about it and other aspects of the story can be found in our developer commentary: https://purkka.itch.io/the-wolf-in-the-wardrobe/devlog/976505/developer-commenta...

There's a lot in here that seems to work – cool character designs, nice art direction, and, on the whole, a striking atmosphere. Unfortunately, the English translation feels kind of unrateable in that the literary intent just doesn't come through clearly enough.

There are a lot of places where it's hard to say if important plot information is being conveyed accurately or not, and a lot of the imagery is strange in a way that doesn't seem purposeful. (An example from the very first line: "A heavy fog has enveloped ruins of the fallen kingdom. Like a palm, it covered every single corner, sealing it in a dormant embrace." – like a palm?) It wouldn't feel fair to say more about the story when I wasn't able to experience it in a form that did it justice.

A stylish little thing that oozes atmosphere with both its grungy visuals and its sharp prose. The art direction works so well; the shading of the sprites mimicking the filter used in the photos is a lovely touch, and the insanely cohesive color schemes make it feel like the characters were designed with their specific backgrounds they appear against in mind. From beginning to end, every choice just works.

Using a looping structure to evoke the grueling routine of a shitty job is not a new trick, but the game pulls it off handsomely. There's a lot of stuff happening in theory between that and all the fun small choices, but the game maintains an admirable clarity and never feels confusing in a way that would annoy or distract from the story – especially since you can basically see everything without ever having to touch the save/load buttons. As far as story goes, everything is surreal and abstract, but not in a bad way. Though it doesn't necessarily feel like things coalesce into anything super concrete, it works that the final beat has less to do with revelation and more with the relief of escaping all this bullshit.

The vibes are certainly good; the soft backgrounds are nice to look at and create a compelling atmosphere despite the prose being a little sparse with descriptions (though there is some nice imagery in the finale). I do think the banter gets a little tiresome, though, even if it's nice for the characters to have clear personalities.

The biggest structural flaw, I would say, is how blunt and frontloaded all the exposition is. The premise – a spirit haunting the protagonist – is pretty good, but how eager the game is to explain the history and the mechanics of this thing just saps out so much of the intrigue. Thankfully, the climax has some interesting beats that feel like good payoffs for some of the subtler setups.

Unfortunately, I had a pretty difficult time getting into this one. The sliding tile puzzles were all good, but the main game mechanic involving navigating a maze proved frustrating in all the wrong ways.

Not being a space the player can navigate by controlling the character directly only ever felt like a limitation of the engine, not a meaningful design choice – building a mental model of where things were in relation to each other was difficult not because of the maze's layout but due to how it was presented. I struggled to understand the point of the system that numbered the rooms in encounter order, too; apart from clarifying when I was exploring new areas, it felt so unintuitive in regard to how people approach this kind of task in real life or video games. A minimap or more prominent landmarks would have been way more helpful, I think.

If this was meant to be an intentional challenge, then I have to say that I just didn't find it fun at all, and the core gameplay came off as so janky it overwhelmed the entire reading experience. Though the other puzzles in the maze segments did look creative, they were difficult to appreciate.

On the other hand, the story mostly felt way too sparse. Almost every scene is heavily dialog-driven, and the writing is brief and plain in style throughout. The character voices don't have much personality, there is so little scene-setting (even the surreal place the protagonist wakes up in is barely described!) or compelling imagery, and the bluntness of the prose leaves basically nothing up to implication or interpretation. The memories are particularly badly harmed by all this, pointing the reader towards the relevant pieces of information so crassly they rarely manage to evoke a mood in spite of some dramatic subject matter, but the frame story doesn't fare much better.

The basic plot is certainly fine, and some twists even seem exciting on paper, but I don't think how the story was presented as prose did it any favors. While I get that gameplay is meant to be the focus here, the writing just didn't really compel me at all, making it more difficult to care about getting through the maze as well. I will say that "solve puzzles to progress to the next cutscene" is not really a form of videogame storytelling I care for a lot in general, so maybe this is just a personal issue.

What we get here is ambitious to a fault as a puzzle game, boldly stretching Ren'py to its limits and beyond, and as a story the opposite, so unassuming it almost feels like it only exists in the form of writing out of obligation. All the art is super good, and I respect the chutzpah, but I found the package too unbalanced and too badly harmed by a couple of fatal flaws to really make for an enjoyable experience.

One of the jam's most striking attempts at (mis)using Ren'py, and from the pixel art to the music to the battle scene to the aspect ratio, a success at pastiche. The presentation is only not perfect because some traces of the engine (like the sliders) remain in the menus, and it's arguably a little too faithful in some places – for instance, the font is not super comfortable to look at in the cramped text boxes that do not feel like they were designed for reading walls of text. Also, I do ultimately lean towards feeling like not doing something more creative with the VN sprite art represents a missed opportunity, since it does come off as out of place both with its antialiasing and its lack of shading.

I guess I'll also have to voice my hesitation about how the fight scene works out in practice. It definitely looks and feels right for what it's modeled after, but is it a productive way to present a battle mostly told in prose? The visuals and the writing are dissonant in a way I think it doesn't quite overcome; so much of what happens just isn't reflected on the screen in any way, making the flow of the scene a bit muddled. Maybe it'll feel more natural to read when there's more of this to play through.

Though the in media res opening feels a little jarring and it takes some time for the character dynamics to land, the writing has its charms and hits some successful emotional beats. If there's a weakness, it might be the pacing being very slow, with not a lot happening in the first 10k words and the plot never quite finding its footing in the sense of having clear forward momentum. I wouldn't necessarily call this a problem, but it does make loving the game as a jam entry difficult – especially since how the demo version ends is just an amusing gag, too. Sunrise Fang is a good time on the whole, but I don't really know if I can rate it favorably in contrast to submissions that tell complete and satisfying stories or at least get further on the road there, if that makes sense? I do want to stress that despite these criticisms, I overall enjoyed the VN a lot and am very excited to read the rest of it!

Excellent all around, definitely some of the best work in the jam! The story is perfectly scoped and paced – the simple plot is absolutely devoid of fluff, with every detail coming off as essential characterization. The character voices are believable and without the kind of overt quirkiness pastiches of internet culture often succumb to, and the prose is not any worse, always feeling purposefully clean and terse.

Though the title has other, more literal meanings as well, I was particularly struck by how the game uses the push-and-pull of closeness and distance and the motif of gradually increasing awareness to frame its story. The drama remains appropriately understated in the childhood segments – the stakes revolve around the central relationship in spite of some dark topics lingering in the background – but there is also a retrospective feeling to it all as the structure simultaneously builds towards the present-day meeting of the characters. It is only fitting, then, for the climax to be equally layered, both an act of finally closing the gap and letting go of the past for good.

The visuals are thoughtfully configured around this theme, too; the meticulously recreated computer graphics capture the feeling of connection via online spaces, and the spriteless final shot is such a stunning moment of intimacy. It's impressive to riff on a central idea in so many ways without it ever feeling hokey.

I would also say that the original soundtrack fares very well – it's memorable and poignant while never underscoring what's happening in the scene too much. The presentation is a little rough around the edges (some buttons in the main menu cause a crash, and it does that annoying thing where the hitboxes of the buttons are limited to the pixels that constitute the letters only), but Erebus's UI component fits the feel of the game, and it's a stylish and delicate package on the whole. Good stuff.

Pretty good, I would say! Even if there are notable weaknesses, like the barebones presentation and plenty of typos (such as the name of the game being misspelled in the title screen), the premise is good, and the writing manages to balance between fun magical realism and tangible stakes. Also, no spoilers, but the twist works on multiple levels – it's satisfying on its own, but also reconfigures the prior story in a way that makes some aspects of pacing and characterization feel more natural.

Some praise first: Herman's character design is excellent, just nice to look at in general, and the colors are a perfect match for the relatively grimy tone of the story. Apart from that, though, the presentation feels really messy; the sprite has visible border artifacts and doesn't really fit in with the 3D backgrounds, and the Naninovel default UI is very much out of place.

It's not impossible to tell a compelling story in 2.5k words, but this one maybe borders on too stripped down to really accomplish a lot? The ostensible emotional core is the relationship between these two characters, but the scene between them is very short and ends so abruptly – to provide context, the writing has to fill in pieces of the backstory via the narration, which just isn't all that exciting to read. What we're reading just kind of feels like a climax without setup.

A reader who is into what's being served here (a light, horny, tropey fantasy adventure) will get what they want, and a reader who doesn't will probably not see the light. Even some arguable issues – clunky exposition, the prose leaning towards bare and functional, character designs strongly favoring a specific body type – feel so expected and familiar that they almost fail to register as flaws. And a lot, like the charming visual style and how cohesive the game looks due to having so much custom art, obviously just works fantastically. That being said, I am not in the target audience, so it's sort of difficult for me to say more.

One thing that did occur to me, though: even if it's a challenge to pull off in a short work, for a story about a team of four characters, the internal dynamics and tensions of the group come off as quite sparsely sketched. You can especially tell that the structure hides so much about the wolves in the choosable scenes and forces the main plot to treat them as a collective – what they think, want, and do individually rarely makes much of a difference in the big picture. Similarly, not a lot of drama is squeezed out of the protagonist. Though there's all this stuff that's set up to make him question his thoughts about the world and his relationship with the wolves, it really just feels like he makes up his mind pretty fast after meeting them and doesn't have true internal conflict afterward. 

But I must stress that it's all largely competent, and most misgivings of mine probably have more to do with my own tastes as a reader than the game doing something wrong.

While a lot of it is undoubtedly due to the difficult development process, I'm afraid this is a pretty rough read on the whole. There are a lot of surface-level polish issues – the French menus, the floating sprites, some awkward prose – but the narrative also just feels quite hurried and inconsistent in tone. Even as a comedic porn game, the intermittent horniness is a lot; for instance, the wolfess (who gets to say like one line in total) fails to feel like an actual character, and the plot leans more towards baffling than funny. The game also comes off as paced around the battle system, making its absence hurt on many levels. Still, congrats on managing to submit this version to the jam!