It's fine; short and sweet. The stylized art direction does work, and there is a lot of nice sound design as well. Polish-wise, I'm not sure if I like the use of slow transitions – I guess they feel a bit dramatic when there's nothing shocking happening in the story and the prose is so matter-of-fact. Reserving them for important moments would make more sense, I think.

Structurally, I'm not sure how well the supernatural (?) stuff really connects. We start the story with a lot of open introspection, then a spooky thing with the TV happens, leading into... more open introspection. I was kind of left wanting for some kind of more concrete narrative arc, with the shifts in tone & genre amounting to something other than just being devices for self-reflection. That being said, there are good moments throughout.

Bowser's Grade: B+

Spoilers ahead!

Just a quick disclaimer that my grades mean nothing and I just want to provide some feedback that will hopefully allow the creator to grow and learn.

This is a short one, but so wonderfully in-scope for a game jam! This is the kind of story that works incredibly well for a month-long project.

Here are some of the things I enjoyed:

• The cohesive art direction is very appreciated. The black and white color palette help sets a rather somber mood, while the toony style of the characters contrasts that mood to bring some levity. Not only does this look charming, it wonderfully compliments the tone of the writing. Well done!
• The custom backgrounds are also very appreciated. I could tell they're screenshots from a video game, but a lot of care went into adding visual effects to match the art style. It ends up elevating the piece overall.
• I enjoyed the writing style! It does great work capturing the authentic thoughts of an early college student, struggling to attune to adult life.
• Sentence structure was also solid! Was a pleasure to read aloud and each sentence flowed very well.
• The way the story ended surprised me in a good way! I was waiting for the hammer to drop, expecting that the main character's entire family had died, or the main character is actually dead themself, or something dark like that. I'm quite happy it didn't go in that direction. I think it's important sometimes to tell grounded stories like this sometimes.
• I resonated a lot with the main character. I too struggle with occasional bouts of low self-esteem, and then feel guilty about having such low-esteem. This piece and the main character work towards normalizing these thoughts and feelings that a lot of young adults struggle with. Overall, I think this story handles it very well.

Here are some areas of improvement:

• I would have loved to see some custom UI elements for this piece. The default DejaVu Sans font and text box luckily weren't tonally dissonant from the art style, but I would love to see the extra effort put into the presentation. It helps differentiate the piece from more low-effort RenPy projects, and it goes a long way to elevating the piece overall.
• In the interest of not making this review too long, I don't want to meticulously list out the individual issues I had with the writing. But to summarize, I think all you have to do is just keep writing! You'll do some great work finding your voice, upgrading your word choice, and improving your sentence structure after some practice.

Overall, it was a great pleasure to read this one. I think you show some great promise as a writer, artist, and developer. Keep making things! I very much look forward to your next project 💖.

'Headlights' is a somber introspective musings on the difficulties of dealing with one's personal demons. The most stand out aspect of this visual novel is the aesthetic and style of the art. It's extremely contrasty, with just black, whites, and grays. The character design is simple yet extremely expressive, and adding in those bits of animation and screen flashes with the static, just helps immerse the reader into the mind of this character. The interesting part about the story is how interesting I felt as more and more details of this character are unveiled. I start to wonder if first this character might be homeless or from the verge of death, then I wonder if they're estranged from their family, since it paints such a bleak picture, but then when the reveal comes that it's actually not all that dire, but the internal demons are what's causing this breakdown is an enlightening moment. I will say it does feel odd that the game goes into a bit of a psychological horror, when it's meant to be pretty grounded in reality, but I guess it's going for a metaphor kind of thing. I think the piece has enough stylization that it could exist as just the self narration in the character's head without the more fantastical objects, but that's just subjective. It's short and personal, and is also very open-ended, to the point where it comes across more as a vent piece about spiraling.  I hope that folks that come across this piece and can relate feel a bit validated knowing they're not alone.

WOW and I repeat WOW this was a short but very impactful story. I loved the GORGEOUS art and how it was used, everything fit so well together. The music also was incredible, it felt so... personal(?) and real(?) sorry I can't really put into words how much it impacted my experience with this game. Story wise I really resonated with Lee and his struggles so I might be just a teeny tiny just a little bit biased when I say that I feel like this is the best submission of this jam I read so far (I only read 7 entries so far but I will edit this comment if my opinion changes)... Thanks for indirectly making my day a little better. That said I wish the two "routes" were a bit more distinct, or maybe even merged together, but beside that I feel like this game is one of the best submissions I read so far. I hope you're ok and that you had fun working on this game. And remember to never stop creating art!

TASTE RATING: "Tastes like cold plain rice with too much olive oil"