"How am I supposed to focus on the plot when I'm slapped in the face with a dragon's fat jiggling tits every few seconds?" Dude where do I find the magic murder basketball to isekai me to that world?

I had a great time with this one! I still have plenty of thoughts about it, and I'll get to those, but this is one of the most fun submissions I've read in this jam so far, which is always a nice break when you're coming off a streak of horrormurdertrauma games.

In terms of presentation, this is solid. I was a bit thrown off by the paper cutout sprites at first since I didn't think they meshed well with the photographic backgrounds, and while I think they still would work better in a more stylized environment, they didn't bother me as the game progressed (I also understand that drawn, sketchier backgrounds may not have been plausible due to jam constraints regardless). The expressions we get in the sprites are also very effective, with Fleetwood's O.O expression being my personal favorite. Didn't really know how Fleetwood's hands were supposed to be "hooved" though? They just looked like normal hands to me. 

Overall, my key takeaway here is that this VN works really well on a micro level, but misses a bit on the macro level. To clarify, the individual jokes land more often than not, and I had very many chuckles over the course of the story, but sometimes these jokes are landing despite the broader plot beats around them not quite getting there. I know this is effectively a straightforward comedy and the plot understandably takes a backseat to the humor, but this issue did inhibit the VN from feeling as cohesive as it could've been from my perspective. In order to get more into that...

Spoiler warning from this point forward.

The whole angel and demon angle didn't really work for me. Again, many of the individual jokes did still work - Credence doing a crossword handcuffed to a bed while Fleetwood looks over his shoulder and provides hints is still a great visual. I just think most of these jokes could have been achieved with a more standard love triangle plot since the more angel/demon-specific gags (like the knockoff anime fight/buildup) were the ones that landed the least for me. In a similar vein, the God segment was the weakest part of the VN for me. As others have pointed out, the white text against a grayish background was a bit hard to read and, despite the apparent escalation in absurdity, most of the beats felt redundant with ground we've already covered - Credence is irreverent, obsessed with crosswords, not very good at them, and tired of people not believing he's aro/ace. This whole part could probably be cut to just get to the final confrontation sooner and we probably wouldn't be missing much. 

Right, so, final confrontation - like some other commenters I agree that neither Fleetwood nor Nash has done much to earn Credence's forgiveness. Fleetwood ran over Byrne (twice), tried to manipulate Credence into abandoning his friends (via pit stank), and kidnapped and held Credence captive to force him to accept Fleetwood when seduction and emotional manipulation didn't work. Nash is both a Nice Guy (TM) and maybe something grosser with him being an immortal being and all who has known Credence his whole life. I kinda thought we were heading towards just a Fleetwood x Nash conclusion, and I still kinda think this would be better than the throuple. It would have felt like a better last punchline to me to have something like Credence in a hospital room with a now crossword addicted Byrne while they get obnoxious vacation messages from Fleetwood and Nash. This could allow Byrne to keep his role as the straight man (other than Credence), keep him as the one character that doesn't "Are you sure" Credence, and emphasize how the terrible aspects of Fleetwood and Nash's personalities make them deserve each other. 

Miscellaneous thoughts:

- Regarding the "are you sures", I'm not ace and I don't personally know anyone who is, but I could definitely see that being a real problem they might experience. I thought Credence's growing frustration at this notion worked well.

- Really liked the fake renpy choice gag in the climax.

- Censorship gag feels a bit played out now? I don't know, even Puss in Boots did it. Feel like you have to do more than just bleep everything out to sell it for me at this point. 

- Since Nash is characterized early as a working man who seems to feel he could live his life a lot better than he thinks he is, I might have considered naming him Lee instead.

- Referencing the 1693 witch trials instead of 1697 felt like a missed FVN solidarity opportunity.

- I'm glad to see Byrne is doing better. I hope he recovered in time to make it to his bobsled competition.

kthxbai

'One Way or Another' is a comedic slice-of-life pseudo-romance with some anime levels of happenstance and plot devices. The character designs by PaperCrease are adorable/hot and I really enjoyed each of the wildly caricatured personalities of each of them. For a comedy, this visual novel does a really good job of playing into all the ridiculous anime tropes and dead pan dialog humor. Stuff like Bryne getting absolutely demolished by a motorcycle but showing up later in full hospital gown, or the twist of the two love interests actual motivations got a chuckle out of me, or straight up god showing up and having a conversation with the protag. Adding in the unusually specific hyper fixation details and pop-furry references is a classic sitcom move, the only thing missing from this visual novel is a laugh track playing to remind me where to laugh. I feel like you really tried to milk the central conflict (misunderstanding) of the two love interests that are falling heads over heels for the protagonist, but it does start to feel like beating a dead horse (maybe on purpose?) by the time god shows up. It makes me wonder if this is a thinly veiled mouthpiece to vent the author's frustrations about being asked about being aro/ace, or if this is venting 'about' aro/ace folks who vent frustrations. What I guess I'm getting at, is that I can't pick up on the author's intent with this work or if it's just a 'not that deep, bro' scenario. There's not really any kind of character arc for anyone, and the only reason that's given for why the two love interests want the protag is because the script says so (literally being assigned by the devil/god), and thus, it fully leans into being a comedy/parody rather than trying to make any kind of larger statement around bein' aro/ace. Overall, I had a pleasant time with it, and I won't fault the author if they just wanted to make something amusing and unserious just to have a fun time writing out of pocket scenes.

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.

Pretty fun. I really enjoyed the brand of humor in this one, often exaggerated to the point of absurdity. The plot is at least serviceable for a comedy VN, but I do like the premise of being caught between a devil and an angel and wanting neither one. Leads to a lot of hilarity for sure, but there's also the simple yet effective moral of there being good in evil and evil in good. Or, uh, mild affability and mild dickishness respectively. Though the whole "I'm ace and nobody believes me" thing is a bit heavy-handed, I suppose it is at least (unfortunately) realistic to how many people react to someone being ace. Byrne confessing to them both (and thus being the true MC of this cheesy love story) was my favorite part for sure. You get a sensible chuckle out of 10.