Coraline Sendak Lewis' Gay Furry Phantom Bridge to Narnia.
I kid. I liked it. Maybe not quite to the extent that apparently everyone else did, mostly since I thought the thematic throughlines were very strong, but the actual narrative seemed to drag at times.
Going to get right into the breakdown, so spoilers from this point forward.
Implementation of Theme:
Oh yeah, easy one for me. Ilmari is mired in the darkness of self-doubt, his lack of understanding of his own identity clashing with his conservative, religious upbringing. Sampo is his tragic guide towards self-discovery and his exile and death, though emotionally brutal, lead Ilmari to reevaluate his attitudes towards himself and on life. He reaches the "light" by coming to terms with his identity and sexuality, at which point Sampo, North-of-Moon, and the wardrobe are no longer relevant as he doesn't have to hide himself anymore. Though the memories of Sampo and that part of his personal journey are always with him, he is figuratively and literally out of the closet and into the world.
So yeah, nailed this part. Unless you come back with a comment response telling me I got it all wrong :(
Story:
Before I get too far into the weeds, I just want to comment quickly that I'm not sure calling this a "horror" VN is really apt. Outside of one slightly gruesome body horror scene and a monster that literally cannot hurt you, this was like 97% drama rather than horror, so I feel like labeling it horror might scare off some people who could otherwise deal with what's actually in the game and might draw and subsequently disappoint people who are looking for something much spookier than what this actually offers.
To kind of transition into my next point, I'm not quite sure what the point of the shard was? Like other than to set up the bloody scene. There's not really any need to generate added tension between Ilmari and Sampo. I think you could have easily gotten there otherwise. Was it foreshadowing that Ilmari was killing him? A mirror of Ilmari's internal crisis tearing him apart from the inside? I don't really know. Kinda question the point of the ailspawn now that I think about it too. Just to give the reader a false sense of hope that Sampo can be saved maybe? Cool CG though, not complaining about that.
I think the broader point that I'm getting at is I wonder if some things could have been cut, especially early on. There is a lot of text, especially in the first act, where we're jumping around ages and settings and I think that probably could've been streamlined to get to the meat of the story faster. Once we've established that Ilmari is religious, homophobic, and curiously not interested in girls, we're probably ready to roll. Also regarding the flashbacks, Kylli and Kylliki are so similar that 1) I guessed that the characters in the other world were just reflections of Ilmari's real life immediately; 2) I feel like that had to have been intentional; 3) I cannot believe that it took Ilmari that long to realize Pellervoinen was supposed to be his dad.
Two parts of the story that really didn't work for me:
1) Kylliki showing up in the dungeon so Ilmari can explicitly explain the premise of the story to her. I think this may have been better conveyed by a purely internal struggle where the breaking of the chains signals to Ilmari when he reaches the correct conclusion than the pseudo Socratic dialogue between Ilmari and Kylliki. With that said, as one of the .01% of readers commenting on the jam that would prefer Kylliki to Sampo, I appreciate the sprite :)
2) The epilogue. This just felt... a bit unnecessary to me and I wish the story had just ended with the wardrobe door closing. "And then I wrote a book about it" feels a little overdone at this point and to me it kind of takes away from the deeply personal journey of discovery we've just seen play out.
Other than that, what's there is good and supports the themes that, as discussed, are conveyed so strongly here. I know I have a lot of opinions (and it's not just you, I do this for everybody) but a lot of this was really quite good.
Presentation:
Mostly strong here - the sprites and CGs provided were good quality and expressive and the music and sound effects worked really well for setting the scenes as well. I'm not entirely sure why this was done in Godot and not Renpy but I didn't experience any major issues inhibiting my enjoyment (or emotional turmoil or whatever). Also love to see some accessibility options and the fact that you managed to put a pretty long jam entry out in two languages, especially with very few typos (at least in the English version) is seriously impressive.
Only knock I have on presentation is that I think there were quite a few long walls of text, especially towards the beginning, that took the "visual" out of the visual novel a bit too much. Not that big of a deal though.
Creativity:
I mean, as joked about in the top line I think some of the influences on this one were pretty clear (and maybe also referenced in the epilogue where Ilmari muses about needing a bibliography more than an actual story) but I think you did more than enough to set this project apart from other stories like it and tell its own thing. This was a really solid take at telling a fantasy-infused story of self-discovery from a difficult starting point.
Really good effort here, I'll give it 43 Blind Channels out of 28 Lordis.