Let's see... sassy cat dragged on a quest through a grim fantasy world with a hot wolf companion... plus the title consistency between "The Blue Hour" and "For the Black Hour"... and the ending scene... I think there may just be a Strawberry Noodles May Wolf cinematic universe in progress.
Personally, I'm all for it. I never got around to your Novembuck entry (I am still vigorously beating myself up for not being able to get to all those), but compared to last year's May Wolf this has just as much charm and felt far less cryptic.
Breaking things down further:
Implementation of Theme:
Yes, we have folklore here, and we have it in spades. I'm not all that familiar with Slavic mythology, and really the only thing mentioned here that I was aware of was leshy (totally not just from Inscryption I swear), so I'm not sure how much of this is based on real world folklore and how much was invented for this universe. Regardless, I think the way legends and mythology were handled here worked really well, and were clearly integral to the narrative and its characters. I'll delve more into those in a bit, but I think this more than met the requirements for the "folklore" theme.
Before I move on too quickly though, I'm also going to throw out a less conventional reading here and say that there's some Catholic imagery as well to go with the Slavic mythology. Besides just the explicit reference to Lazarus for our protagonist rising from the dead, the dead god's blood turning to wine is basically transubstantiation in reverse, and I did initially read Lazarus' severed arm gushing water as a post-crucifixion reference, though this could just as easily be more literal in the sense that he was resurrected by trees and is therefore like, part tree or whatever. I thought there was a plausible angle with past Poland being rooted in Slavic folklore and current Poland being very Catholic, but I could be reading way too much into it.
Presentation/Writing:
I'm not going to rag on the language too much since translating a whole VN within the jam timeline is understandably very difficult, you're aware that it could be polished more, and, as I said at the top, I thought this was way clearer than last year's anyway. There were some points in particular when it was a bit hard to follow, like the action scene where Lazarus and Cyryl fight the knight, but I'm always impressed with the vivid imagery in your work, and the writing style in general, despite the occasional translation jank, is technically superb.
Art and music were outstanding here as well, though I'm not quite sure what the significance of the screams at the beginning of the main story and epilogue were about. Visually, while I wish there were a few more images, like the knight approaching or the stars in the cave, I recognize that it's hard to get all that done in a jam, and I really did like what we got. Sprites for our main characters are well done and expressive, the village scene was haunting as intended, and I really liked how Butwiala was presented.
Just one other error that I noted here, there is at least one instance of Delilah's name appearing in her text box name tag before we actually learn her name.
Story:
While for the most part I felt that the story and characters were really solid here, my main critique with the story is that pretty much every conflict is resolved very easily once the script has deemed it time to do so.
Like, a major driver for the interactions between Cyryl and Lazarus in the first act is Lazarus' flippant attitude, which clashes with Cyryl's mission to put the sun and the moon back in order. But once Lazarus gets KO'd, Butwiala essentially tells him "hey stop that" and he does, immediately, and they're practically instantly best friends after that. It's not that the scene with Butwiala is bad - the emphasis that Lazarus loves unconditionally despite others hurting him (I can't not see the Jesus thing, I'm sorry man) is great and I totally see that as a catalyst for his growth, it just feels a bit sudden for me.
Same kinda thing with the resolution of the central sun/moon conflict. Like once they figure out where to go from Delilah, Lazarus and Cyryl walk up to the giant practically unimpeded, adjust some orbs, and the day is saved. Like maybe resolving that conflict wasn't important as the character beats, but it did feel very easy to do once they had the information, which itself seemed to be acquired conveniently by stumbling upon Delilah in the village (yes, the cannibals directed them to the village, but I don't think they knew about Delilah).
Other than that though, I thought the main characters were handled really well. Besides the occasional rushed character development, I really liked their relationships and interactions (more so than Blue Hour) and I found the whole ending scene with the trees revealing that they resurrected Lazarus, forgiving Cyryl, and thanking him for all he did for them to be really touching and emotional.
Creativity:
I know the last section may have sounded critical, but don't take that the wrong way. I really, really liked this project and it had creativity oozing out of every corner. The integration of the folklore, the writing, and the art direction all contribute to make a really excellent experience, and this was a real highlight for me.
Final score here of 5 giant moon moths out of 7 blistering violin solos (get it because the violinist is literally on fire, yes I'll see myself out).