This is a novel idea, a reality tv show a la The Bachelor/Bachelorette or Love Island but in VN format! There's some good stuff bubbling up between the long monologues and meandering narrative, namely that the characters don't all seem to immediately have the MC in mind for finding their true love and that this game show is somewhat freeform. Unfortunately, the narrative would benefit greatly from having a bit more focus on the MC and also trimming some repeated lines and sentiments. I would highly recommend watching some reality tv shows like those mentioned in the beginning of this comment.

Other than that, I'm happy you found time to feature nearly ALL of the provided sprites!

I like the concept a lot! I personally haven't watched any of these types of shows, so it's interesting to read through it. I liked how you made it so that everyone wasn't vying for the MC and that some are having their own stories away from our perspective as well.

Now this struggles a bit with the intro sequence, and how for some reason we are just a wolf magnet. And those wolves are snarly at each other because they're wolves? it's certainly an interesting thing to add to your story, but I'm just intrigued on how that came about. And sometimes you used the describing words a little too often, like the predatory eyes and the twitchy tail.

Also, for what we have in the story right now, I don't know where the theme is implemented in the story.

Excited to see this get updated, good job!

It's a fun concept, set in a Bachelor-like reality show setting. Balancing this many characters can be a bit challenging though, and I feel like the intro sequence struggled with this a little, often jumping to every character's reaction every time the MC says or does something. I think this could have benefited from spending a longer time with each character instead of jumping between them all at once. Characters are also described with the same words often, such as Christian's predatory grin or Michael's twitching tail. It's also a touch overwritten at times. Scenes could stand to be shorter, and some lines can easily be cut without losing much. Still, it's a lot of fun with so many characters at once, and the VN doesn't pass up the opportunity to stir up drama every now and then. I'm not sure why all the wolves hate each other just for being wolves, but it's intriguing. The VN is also careful to give everyone an equal chance, not relying too much on the MC's perspective to keep everyone relevant and interested in each other. I appreciated that balance. Generally, this was a fun and creative way to make use of as many of the default assets as possible. It's a shame it ended where it did, because I can see this being more interesting as time goes on and the characters become more familiar with each other.

This reminded me a bit of a couple of entries from last year, Cruising For Love and Murder and Werewolf’s Prison in concept.  You managed to get a lot of work done in a short amount of time with this one!  

I like the concept and the general direction of the story, but I would suggest trimming down a couple of parts, namely the spider dancing with the bunny, and then after the MC… it repeated quite often what a good dancer the spider was, and slowed the pace quite a bit, to the point it felt the spider was actually the main character at times.  Unless those two scenes are critical to the plot later on, I think making it around a third the size would probably be adequate.  

That aside, I do enjoy what you’re going for, and think there’s a good foundation here.  It currently feels like you could do this as a series, with each release being a “weekly episode” of the series.  Maybe adding a few other tropes of cheesy dating shows would add a little personality, like the “one-on-one” cam interviews with a producer, where they say one thing in front of the others, and say virtually the opposite in the personal interview.

[Insert Love Island quote but make it gay]

The premise is pretty interesting, but this VN didn't grab me. I was expecting a lot more drama and intrigue from the premise, but it just came across as a simple romance VN, which created some dissonance between what I was expecting and what I was reading. It was weird how the characters were so quickly attracted to Jake when there wasn't anything that would indicate that they're especially attractive or something. The prose could use a lot of work; there are a lot of repeating lines, and some scenes walk at a snail's pace. The characters were generally likable, although Christian's behavior is a bit weird for the tone of the VN. There were some cute moments, but the VN overall didn't do much for me.

I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of making a game taking place in a dating show so I was interested in seeing how you’d do it. First note is that I was afraid at the beginning that the characters were too similar and would blend with each other. But they started differentiating more so it wasn’t much of a problem. The setup for the show seems pretty simple, so i’m not sure this is using the premise to its full advantage. Some scenes really drag on (how many times do the characters have to say they didn’t expect the spider to dance like that?) which made me a bit impatient to move on. As for the presentation, the text box is… well, ugly. Having the clear border all the way to the side of the screen doesn’t work when the text still only stay in the middle. I feel like the sprites are too zoomed in, but it’s a fine decision. They sometimes move slightly when changing expression, it’s a bit weird. The music matches the environment but it gets repetitive. Overall, I can’t say I liked this, but there are some interesting stuff still.

The premise is pretty fun and makes for a unique interpretation of the theme; you'll get my points for that. However, I feel like the game itself doesn't really do a lot with the fact that it's supposed to depict a trashy reality show? The characters are all a little muted and there's little drama to speak of, no host or crew appear to be present (making for an awkward introductionary scene where the other contestants have to say all the "welcome to the show" stuff), and the fact that they're being filmed doesn't really seem to be on anyone's mind actively. It feels like it should have come up in the scene when the protagonist is considering getting intimate with the love interest, for instance, if not in general as something most people would find a bit stressful.

The contest is also just incredibly freeform in a way that comes off as out of character for this kind of thing – besides the coupling rule, all the contestants seem to do is hang out, with not even the big "group date" having anything that surprising or entertaining happen in it. Following the events from a single protagonist's point of view means we also miss out on confession cams, hyper-dramatic sound effects, and all the other tacky tricks these shows often use.

Ultimately, even if it might be just the VN being unfinished, it doesn't feel like there's much here to latch on to. The side characters getting a lot of screentime and the formal structure of the show progressing so slowly don't help, either; if I was a producer on Find Your Light, I would make the contestants couple right away to provide some action.

Okay, so let's start with the positive side here: "we have a bunch of stock sprites provided for the jam, what if we took them all, created characters for them, and stuck them all in a game show" is a really fun idea. 

It's an ambitious plan that has, up to this point, unfortunately not stuck the landing.

This review is going to be fairly critical, but please don't take it personally. All of this is meant to be constructive, and I wouldn't be taking the time to write this out if I didn't want to see you improve. 

Walking through each of the categories, with spoilers from this point out:

Implementation of Theme:

Well... there was an attempt, clearly, with the VN and in-universe game show being called "Find Your Light", but the theme wasn't just "light", it was "a light in the darkness". I'm having trouble spotting what exactly the "darkness" is for the MC or really anyone else in this story, other than just like, being single. Everybody seems mostly fine here; the biggest struggle any of the characters show is being kinda shy. Compared to some of the directions other jam submissions have gone with the themes, this is on the weaker end.

Story:

I'm not gonna sugar coat it here, there are myriad problems with the story so far. 

1) The MC: Pretty much all of the cast so far have paper thin personalities, but the MC's is practically nonexistent. While I generally dislike "blank slate" protagonists, I can understand the need for it in this kind of situation where the MC is supposed to be the player's avatar, as if the player was the one actually participating in the game show. However, if you're going to go in that direction the player needs to have some actual agency in choosing how to handle certain interactions and choosing who to spend time with. If you're not going to have this level of choice and interaction, that's fine, but then you also need to develop the MC's personality. There are several points at the dinner/dance scene where characters remark about how the MC does his own thing, but how would they know that? He's spoken like five times up until that point and none of those have been anything of substance.

2) Narrative efficiency: This goes a little bit towards characterizing the MC as well, but let's look at some numbers here: there are 1276 lines in the "script" file and 230 in the Christian route file. In the former, between Ethan's introduction and the "choice" (quotes because they all lead to the same place) of who to spend time with during the first event there are approximately 600 consecutive lines where the MC is not mentioned in either speech or action. Of the 230 in the latter, about 60 of those are describing other couples getting together. Close to a full half of your story that is ostensibly about the player's character participating in a game show consists of spectating secondary, presumably non-romanceable contestants. That is... not great. Besides the fact that the focus is in the wrong place, there's a lot of repetition too. You don't need every character to be surprised that the tarantula is a good dancer. I got it the first time.

3) Setting: There are a few aspects of the game show itself that either don't make sense or aren't clearly explained. When the MC arrives at the house, the other characters welcome him to "the group" as if they've been there for a while and are already familiar with each other, with some of them talking like they've been there before. At the end of the first event, Ethan also talks like this, saying "I've seen how others react when they first arrive". Does he mean from watching the show on TV? Or is he a repeat contestant? Otherwise how would he have seen that? He just got there too and was the second to last to arrive. There's also a lack of clarity in what is actually being filmed as part of the broadcast and what isn't. It would be helpful to indicate when the MC is on camera and not. There's a lot you could play with regarding characters behaving different when on camera (either of their own volition or at the behest of producers) but none of that is coming through.

4) Christian: This one might be a matter of personal preference, but that super pushy attitude raises a lot of red flags for me and I felt very uncomfortable interacting with him. 

Presentation:

It was mostly fine. I'm not going to knock you on the stock sprites obviously. There wasn't anything wrong with the presentation per se (even if the music got a bit repetitive after a while), but it didn't do much to stand out either.

Creativity:

As stated at the top, I think the premise here is a good idea. Throwing everyone into a game show and letting the player sort it out is a fun approach. Ultimately though, I think a lot of the decisions from that point needed some more time in the oven before this was ready to go.

Again, this is all meant to be constructive - I hope you stick with writing and game design, whether it's continuing with this project or trying again with something new. While this might have stumbled in some areas, I hope you can take the criticism as a learning experience as you go on to create bigger and better things.

I don't think I've seen a game show FVN before, and I fear it might not really be my thing, unfortunately. Personal tastes aside, there's a lot of repetition going on in this VN, especially during the character introductions - dialogue that fills space without really giving further insight. It feels like it was padding for word count, even though the VN is well over the minimum limit.

The little hints of conflict are tantalising. Its a shame that there wasn't time to dive into the meat of it and of the potential stressors you can have in this setting before the Jam deadline.

'Find Your Light' is a bold and expansive concept for a game jam visual novel. I love reality competition and game shows, so I was immediately intrigued by the premise of this visual novel. There is a potential for this to be a pseudo-dating simulator mixed with the classic "pick your route" style of visual novel. Unfortunately, this falls short for me. It needs a lot more time to cook, and a game-show style simulator takes a lot of up-front initial planning to make it feel immersive. It's sort of the difference between playing 'on' the game show and only 'watching' the game show.

For example, especially during the first dance challenge scene, almost all the focus was on the tarantula character and his flirtations between the rabbit and goat characters. The main character (which is the player) stands on the side line and just watches passively as all this unfolds around them. Something to consider when developing this concept further, is to present the player with choices on what they would like to focus on during a scene. If there was a choice at the start of the challenge like "a) Ask someone to dance. b) Wait to be asked to dance. c) Go stand by the punch bowl," then you could have the scenes unfold in a way where the reader is going to be a character in the scene, not just an observer.

Another thing to consider with reality game shows is opportunity cost. If you choose to spend time with one character, that means that you choose 'not' to spend time with another character. Have a big exposition scene at the start to give everyone a taste of who the characters are (keep it short), and then present the choice of only getting to talk with 2 or 3 characters to learn more about them. I have extra comments on the practical structure of the show itself, which the rules are never fully told or explained. Something like "Every night you get to pair up in a room, while the lone bachelor sleeps alone," which would've established the stakes better in a sense of 'if you don't pair up, the less likely you'll find love at the final episode'.

Back to rating based on criteria, the presentation has a lot of room for improvement. Stuff like layering the sprites so that way hands aren't covering faces of other sprites, limiting the amount of text in each text box for easier reading, designing the text box border in a way so that the names and sub-menu aren't bleeding into it, or keeping track of background pictures to make sure that day scenes and night scenes match the text.

The dialog and story feels akin to a harem anime, where the protagonist is immediately loved by all the characters despite not really doing much. As much as I enjoy an escapism simulator with no drama, with a premise of a reality TV show, you could've really made much bolder choices for over the top drama or caricatures for the other bachelors. Examples like one of the characters is a sex-freak, one gets extremely irritated by the smallest things, one might be completely vain and care about looks, or another one is a walking doormat. I'd offer that you could really turn everything up to 11 if you wanted to.

The theme, aside from the title of the show, doesn't really seem to present itself in this narrative. There's a 'light' in which it's about finding love, but I don't know where the 'dark' in this story is. Maybe each of the bachelors has a particularly dark backstory, or maybe all of the characters have terrible traits who can't hold onto a relationship (or maybe there's a secret BDSM sex dungeon)? I feel like there's more to explore in this scenario. Overall, I commend the effort put forth in this visual novel with the large word count, and the ambition to choose a difficult set up with nine characters to write for, but I think the developer really bit off more than they could chew within the time limit.