Even though I'm not trans, this VN really hit close to home for me. Staying up late at night to play online web games, cringy internet speak, the excessive amounts of optimism, exploring your identity through weeb shit, and chatting with other people around your age online, it's all there. It feels so nostalgic, like I'm viewing a time capsule. The protagonist and Nat are super adorable, and so is their romance. I also find the falling out to be realistic, considering they're teenagers. The ending captures the return to adulthood in a way that also hits close to home. The trans coming out narrative was done pretty naturally and with a ton of nuance, which I greatly appreciate. The visuals are pretty great, capturing early 2000s websites incredibly well. The sprites and CGs are also pleasant to look at. I like the soft rendering and the muted colors. I especially love the music in here. Compliments to Cadmium, you did an amazing job! I really want to hear your work in more VNs. The Animal Crossing music does fit the vibes of the VN. There are only two issues I have with the VN, but they're extremely minor: The first is that I do agree with other people in the comments that there should have been at least one more scene before the falling out, so that the shift becomes smoother, but it's not a big deal. The other thing is that I would have liked to see what the protagonist looks like as an adult. Overall, this was one of my favorites in the jam and I highly recommend you read it!

This was a beautiful story! I really liked the art and music that went with it! And the story was really well done as well!

There isn't much I could complain about besides having some typos here and there.

I also really enjoyed the mentions and the usage of the old ways of communicating back then.

Amazing work!

I had a ton of fun reading this in stream, it took me back to my younger years and while it wasn't IMVU for me it was like looking back into a time machine. It was incredibly relatable and makes good use of nostalgia and teenage angst/self discovery to write this plot.

The music in combination with the themes gave me chills at some points. The art was top notch. The writing, despite a typo here and there was well paced and thought out.

Great job guys! An instant favorite

EASIEST SIX OUT OF FIVE STARS OF MY LIFE
If I had a dollar every time dracuclaw showed up to a game jam and went straight for the jugular, I'd have two dollars. I love the nuance, and the layers, and the very real trans (and overprotective? overpossessive? lol parents) experiences. Amazing art, I love your style so much, it lends itself so well to the moods of the characters but also the tone of the work overall. Nat is insanely charming, and Oliver is someone I can't help but root for myself as well. I think, from what I've seen, you do an insanely good job at setting up emotional stakes that feel real, and conflict that has lasting consequences, while still finding ways to deliver your characters back to... if not a "happy" ending, then at least one with closure. 

and as for Cadmium, please pass on my regards as well, the music is astounding, and it really adds that extra OOMPH to the scenes, the curation and creation of it really help take the emotional moments over the edge. Great work, as a trans reader myself, I cannot stress enough how thrilled I am with this entry! 

The music was really good and the story was so cozy. And I like the bit of dread with the vingettes from teh future

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.

'Close and Distant' is a heartfelt and raw look into the modern follies of adolescence and the discovery of gender expression and trans identity. The paintings of the sprites and backgrounds are extremely well done, even down to recreating the feelings of older websites where plenty of youths spent their time on. It was quite the revelation to figure out just what was going on, since it started with the email when they were older, and transitioned to the teen years when they met, and then coming to realize "oh, they're both trans, that's what's up".

I can definitely connect with the whole 'staying up late to be on websites you're not supposed to be on', so that really connected me back to some early memories. The way that Em and Nat navigated their friendship-into-relationship is so painfully teenager in the best way; super messy, super optimistic, the extreme reactions and the absolute egos with both of them. It is nice that they got to reconcile in someway once they've both matured a bit and realized the missteps of their youth, though the romantic in me wishes that this acted as a jumping off point for their friendship as adults, and I could be privy to that story.

Having the framing device that one hated the other in the beginning, did leave me in suspense for what they could've done in their past to cause them to split up. Though having it only be that one said they were feeling anxious and the other taking it as a personal attack does feel super teenager coded, I had expected a certain 'outing' that might've occurred that really threw a wrench into their friendship. While I understand that it was a stylistic choice, I wonder if it might've been more effective to not lead with the email, and leave the epilogue as the epilogue, instead of book ending it.

As for the theme of 'light in the dark', you definitely get that imagery of a laptop screen in the middle of the night, but only kind of figuratively, in a 'friendship to help express yourself' kind of way. The music was great, very evocative and atmospheric. Overall, it's a cute and nostalgic story, a hard learned lesson of avoiding blowing up your support structure over small things.

Great presentation as always. It's also a unique idea, taking place in a setting very familiar to us and yet unfamiliar to FVN settings: the internet! It's a great depiction of those dark ages of the internet, when we were young and vulnerable teenagers in online chatrooms. A haunting time, one full of cringe. Yet this is a surprisingly wholesome and touching story about growing up and discovering your identity. It's beautiful in how relatable it is (even to a cis guy like me). Pacing and writing were impeccable as well. I found myself hooked into the plot, and even tearing up a little at the end.

Honestly the most shocking thing is that out of everything that hit close to home with this VN the one that hit too close to home was the comment about living in SoCal and never going to the beach. Just a shoryuken to my soul right there.

Ahem. Anyway.

I really liked it. Probably one of my personal favorites of the jam so far even if there are a couple issues holding it back from perfection.

Spoilers from this point forward.

Implementation of Theme:

Yes there's a literal light of the laptop screen in the darkness that also mirrors the "darkness" of the characters' lives in which they constantly feel the need to hide who they truly are. All well and good, but I think there's also an attempt here to have the main two characters being "lights" for each other, and I think this is done alright. It's certainly stronger in the first half when they're guiding each other in self-discovery, but the very abrupt ending to that phase calls to mind more of a spark than a consistent light, and when they reunite both of them seem to be doing fine enough that there really doesn't feel like there's much "darkness" there. Maybe it's semantics and I'm not making sense to anyone other than myself. I'm not really discounting you for it either way.

Story:

The two main characters are written very convincingly, and as someone who was probably around the same age during the first phase of this story there is a lot of nostalgia attached for me, with both positive and negative connotations. A lot of this felt written from experience, and that shows in the realism of their internal thoughts and internet and in-person interactions (mostly. There were a couple lines that immediately made me think "a thirteen year old didn't write that").

With that said, I think there were a few pacing issues that held this one back a bit. I'm not questioning the sudden block and ghosting after the fight; that sounds exactly like something a fourteen year old would do. It just felt like things were paced much more methodically before and during the con, and were then really rushed from that point on. Like there were a few details or interactions missing that maybe could have smoothed that section out a bit. The ending to the story was also very abrupt. Having an open ending is totally fine, but the VN seemed to practically end mid-thought.

Presentation:

I really loved the way this game looked. Everything from the UI to the sprites and CGs to the music and laptop screens did a great job of capturing both the setting and emotions of the scenes. Very few typos or other language errors throughout, which is also greatly appreciated.

As others have said, I strongly encourage you to take down the .04 version unless that violates the rules of the jam somehow. When I saw three download links, my dumb square brain processed that as Win/Mac/Android and not "one of these is older than the others" and I downloaded the .04 version. I actually didn't encounter any problems while playing since I cruised right through in one go, but when going back through to write the review, hitting ESC caused an error which is... suboptimal for a Renpy game. It looks like some issues were fixed with the updated build, but I wouldn't want anyone else to be confused.

Creativity:

This was an interesting look into trans issues and their relationship with growing internet (and broader American) culture in the late 00s and early 10s, and adding the furry elements actually made this even more interesting as a kind of thought experiment. Anthro faces typically come off more androgynous by default than human ones, and while this probably wouldn't be exactly the same in the "real world" universe where this VN is presented as opposed to our world's furry art (where often basically all you need to make a "masculine" anthro character "feminine" is tack on boobs and eyelashes), it seems like transitioning might be easier, at least visually (not psychologically or societally), in the furry realm. But what happens when you have an anthro-specific biological trait like a fur pattern that is unique to one sex? I don't really have an answer for that. Honestly, it seems like the VN doesn't really either since that's kinda glossed over in the epilogue. But regardless it's still interesting to consider. 

A beautiful story that explores what feels like a long ago era. The characters are well written and very thought out.

The artwork is fantastic and conveys their emotions wonderfully.

I do think some of the initial time skipping could have stronger tells, a different font maybe specific screen transition, however, by the final scene it feels a lot more natural.

A stand out entry in this Jam. The aesthetics of the were on point in all aspects and the early 2010's vibe was spot on with all the era specific uses of media and social networks. Dialogue was on point usage of framing for CGs and sprites was great. Glad both had happy endings. Music was somber and a nice touch overall. Great work.

Downloaded through the Itch.io app and it appears to have automatically downloaded 0.4 instead of 0.5 so I will say that I am speaking on my experience with 0.4:

The music and and art direction meld incredibly to create a brilliant atmosphere that I feel compliments the writing really well.  The characters and story were very well written and felt just so real in a way that made me remember the melancholy that was 'being a transgender 13 year old'. These characters felt like very much like real people which made it so easy to get invested in their story and relationship, I cried! While I feel like the conflict could've been longer; after the convention before the mother picks Olivier up there just feels like there's a large chunk text/context missing; the pacing feels otherwise very nice, slowly building their relationship and history together. Code wise, the game is incredibly unstable, with the about page having it's text misaligned and over the top of each other, trying to access save/load functions fully crashing the game, and the skip function failing to recognise what was unread text.

Overall you have written a really nice story,  gotten me to care deeply about these characters, and presented both this story and characters very well with suitable art direction. Good on ya', you should be proud!

Really nice story of trans awakening and young love! The writing is really good and the sprites are nice. The IMVU CGs were really cute. That part just before the mom picks the MC up, which is supposed to show how the MC feels different in his irl life felt too short and vague to work as that. The rest of the story, however, flowed really well together. Funny that “Emily”, the stereotypical trans woman name, is actually the trans man’s dead name.^^ And it’s always fun to use animal’s sexual dimorphisms in that kind of way. One problem though, the save screen doesn’t work (on pc version). Although, I now notice that I downloaded 0.04. When making an update like that, it might be better to hide the older versions. Overall, I really liked it, great job!