The writing is fun, really knows what it wants to be. Love how absurd the setup is in the beginning, and the sword; there was this strange fountain pen penis I'd heard of before, but I never thought I could see it for real. It was a very charming read, and the ending was like a dream.

There's individual aspects here that works in my view. The presentation's on the simpler side but uses the jam sprites creatively by adding to, taking parts, or applying engine functions like zoom to support the storytelling. The writing also gets the work done, and the horror was rather effective.

Where I feel it falters is trying to be so many different things - we get horror for a bit, relationship drama, kink comedy and kink smut. With all of these different directions, they all end up too anemic. The horror kinda just cuts off, the stakes of the relationship drama was practically nothing, the comedy got lost, and the sex scenes were just too brief. To tell on myself, I am somewhat the target demographic (unlike most other commenters) so I say: there should have been more freaky sex! I got like 5 lines of being micro! Or if not that, there was opportunity to lean more into the absurdism of stuff like "he got turned into a cock and he let me fuck him". How does that even work, the people want to know; show OR tell pls 😭 

In summary, I liked it but gently encouraging to get freakier 😜

I always have a tough time gathering my feelings on Hollow's work. On one hand their projects are 100% not made for me due to the fetishes involved. On the other, they are consistently made with a playful view of sex and kink that I find a mix of fascinating and funny. This game is all the above and... more? As much as I am entertained by these games, I often don't find them very consistent or skillfully made; A Transforming Night to Remember represents what I see as signs that this is about to change. Although basic, plot arcs and character conflicts are executed pretty well. There's a fight between the MC and his boyfriend that I found particularly engaging while avoiding melodramatics. I would also praise the presentation here. The kinks portrayed naturally force blocking and transitions to change and the game makes laudable attempts to perform those changes. Ultimately, A Transforming Night to Remember could not win me because it just wasn't made for me. What it got out of me was plenty chuckles and curiosity for the future of this dev.

I'm not into transformation, but I respect people making VNs just to indulge in their kinks. I enjoyed the campy B-movie horror of the first half; it was both fun and funny. I don't have much to say about it other than I enjoyed it for what it is. Would recommend if you like campy horror or are into transformation.

It’s short and fun. The jokes are funny, and music and visual presentation help tell them. You’re getting mileage out of the jam assets. I particularly like the blushing underwear and when Zack shows up in the corner when Percy is alone in the bedroom.

I agree with another commenter that the horror stuff is kind of dropped partway through. The end doesn’t really match the beginning and middle, and the jokes stop coming. There’s a sort of drama between Percy and Wyatt that the ending can be seen as a resolution to, but the drama was never as much the focus as the horror parody or the fetish porn.

Self indulgent as hell and campy. It knows what it is, a niche fetish game, and I respect the hell out of it. While it isn't my thing really, it's written competently enough to be a fun read regardless. One thing I did notice was the awkward phrasing of some sentences/minor grammar errors. Other than that, I have no issues.

Really wild story that is entirely camp and self-indulgent. A very fun time to go through it

Yeah, I'm not really the target audience here since this was mostly just a vehicle for the author's unique fetishes, which I do not share, but there were still a few moments that got a chuckle out of me and the fairly short runtime didn't overstay the welcome of the premise. 

Getting into more specifics, breaking down by rating criteria:

Implementation of Theme/Creativity:

Sure, we have our folklore here with the legend of the automated peacock, which is an in-universe cryptid with its own mythology. However, said mythology is very, very thin and basically exists as a barebones foundation to make the fetishes happen (the whole legend is only like, five lines long). This plays into creativity in my opinion too, since, while yes, I doubt I will see another example of a robot peacock using his sword cock to cut off people's clothes, then turn one of them into underwear for his boyfriend to jerk off into, from your past works that does absolutely look right up your personal alley and I'm not really sure how far outside the box you had to go to come up with this. Kinda felt more like quickly adapting the jam theme to something you were already going to do regardless.

Presentation/Writing:

Mostly stock assets here, and that's totally fine. As several others have pointed out, there were some creative uses of those, especially involving zooms for certain effects, and probably the biggest laugh I got out of this was the blushing underwear. Music for much of the VN was fairly generic, the horror ambience included, though at least this matched the intended tone, even if I'm not sure why that was the intended tone of the scene (more on that in a bit). There were a few points when the sound dropped out and it was awkwardly quiet, but there weren't too many long stretches of this. 

The writing style isn't going to set the world on fire or anything, but it was well done enough and usually matched the intended tone of the scene. Very few egregious proofreading errors, which is always great, though there were some hiccups like Percy waiting for "Percy's" input rather than Wyatt's in the campfire conclusion with Zack. I do wish you had picked a different color for Percy's name tag though to distinguish him a bit more in the intro. Since we're so briefly introduced to the group, it was similar enough to AJ's that I didn't even process him as a separate character and I had to rewind to figure out who the narrator was supposed to be.

Story:

It's certainly not deep, but for what it's trying to be, it's fine. The primary critique I have here, and I think this is something that Fuze was getting at as well, is that considering how short this experience is, I wish the tone was a bit more consistent. Like some of the setup is absolutely absurd - the cryptid they're looking for is a mechanical peacock, they're literally talking to a mechanical peacock, and seemingly nobody picks up on this. Presumably this is intentional since Percy makes a comment on it later, but between that and the waiver, as well as the whole ridiculous nature of the transformation power, I wish this would have leaned all the way into absurd humor. Like, tastes vary, obviously, but I'm not sure I needed a grounded emotional conversation before transitioning directly into transformation kink sex. 

Same kinda thing for the brief horror elements. Like, considering everyone seems to be super into the TF stuff, Percy found the note that says Zack does TF stuff, and Zack wants to do the TF stuff to them, why is there even a conflict here? (Also, tangential to the last point, since Zack likes doing the TF stuff to people, if he was worried about too many people finding out, why would he invite people to his actual residence rather than just renting out houses for the night or something? Seems like he could fix his moving woes pretty easily.)

Branching paths and player interaction is always nice, though I did feel like there was barely any difference in the routes besides the sex scenes, which also felt pretty short. Personally, I didn't mind that so much since, like I said, they're not my fetishes, but maybe someone who was more in to this sort of thing would have liked those drawn out a bit longer. 

Last point here, I do wish there was at least some depth given to the characters. I know it's a kink vehicle and all, but like, I couldn't tell you a single thing about AJ or Merlin's personalities (Merlin likes cameras? Maybe?). Having actual, defined personality traits is a great foundation for setting up jokes, and I wonder if this story would've been better served by cutting AJ and Merlin entirely and fleshing out Percy and Wyatt a bit more just to give you some more material to work with.

Anyway, like I said at the top, not for me necessarily, but I thought this was solid for what it was trying to be. 

Final score of 12 peas out of 19 cocks.

'A Transforming Night to Remember!' is a light-hearted farce about going cryptid hunting and proceeding to indulge in some very particular kinks/fetishes. What's to say about this particular story other than it's just a fun romp, that almost plays out like a porno-plot, and I don't hate it for that. It also features two fairly uncommon kinks, in transformation into clothing and shrinkage with some macro/micro play. It stands out as being a blatant vehicle to have some fun with the pre-rendered sprites and to stick in as many weird and out-of-pocket moments as they could.

The story starts out with the group of friends going out into a cabin to search for a cryptid known as the "Automated Peacock", which was a clockwork peacock that was created in olden times and has just existed up until today, and he uses his sword cock to put his 'victims' into states of arousal so he may then transform them using automaton magic or something. Then when the suspiciously metallic peacock host goes off to bed, the guys start their cryptid hunt, only for the automatic peacock to start picking them off one by one. Of course, he catches the reader who then can choose to be transformed into something that might help his rocky relationship with his boyfriend (into a pair of underwear or shrunk down micro-size). Either way, the boyfriend finds you, and you have the option to indulge in some pretty hot kinky sex with the transformed you. Then you go looking and find out that the host was the automated peacock the whole time, and that now he has to go into hiding again, now that they know his secret. But, he leaves the reader with the ability to transform so that the reader and his boyfriend can continue to have sexy fun with this new ability.

The presentation really makes as much use as it can out of the pre-rendered sprites and animation to sell the fantasy of a sexy porno that features transformation. Featuring the automaton peacock's sword cock is quite a feat for a jam. Little extra details like zooming in the sprite to simulate being small or putting the blush on the undies to show that it's the character transformed are really cute bits. Even when the friend tanuki was just a cock and balls, really funny moments all around. And that's not to say there wasn't non-sexy funny bits, stuff like the obliviousness to the peacock's true identity or stuff like signing a release form are just fun touches. The writing is fun, it gets a little bit weird in which POV is happening in certain scenes, but overall, was easy enough to follow.

There's the hint of a folklore element in this one, it helps that they told the full story of the cryptid, but I feel like at some points it was taking itself to seriously that it feels disconnected from the overall tone the visual novel is going for. I'd say that you could've really leaned in more into the absurdity of the situation, and played up the humor even more. Part of me thinks you could've used another sprite as a stand-in for the main character, especially since once they get transformed it feels like they suddenly gain a position in the screen instead of being the camera view point. The creativity to just lean into the ridiculous nature of the plot really sold it for me. Seeing the peacock with a sword dick and going "yes, they will use that to cut off the clothes of the other characters anime style" is just a fun scene to watch. I would also suggest maybe to give the friends a bit more distinct personalities, just to help give some texture to the cast. Give them some differing opinions about the kink, just how horny they are, or other little quirks.

I can see that this is a particular interest to this author, and I'm glad that they could indulge it even more in this one. It's fun to see what can be done with the pre-rendered sprites, and I think does a fantastic job of even showing that sexual scenes can still be done, even if there aren't custom cgs made as big splash centerfolds. It seems as long as there's game jams with free assets to be used, there's going to be more of these fun sexy farces, so I hope you continue writing about your favorite kinks, I could see you expanding into other lesser used kinks as well, just for the fun of it.

Another jam, another Hollow VN. I admire the consistency. Also, even though I really enjoyed your last VN, I'm glad you did another transforming kink VN. The story in this one was passable, enough to give a skeleton of a plot, but the real intrigue is obviously the kinky stuff. And honestly, it was pretty hot actually. I did want to see more of Giant Cock Merlin though. Didn't realize how hot Fuze's tanuki would be. Also, good job using the peacock automaton sprite, I always worried that would be underused. I liked Zach a lot in this one too. He might be a spooky cryptid that transforms people into underwear, but he has feelings too, damn it. All in all, a decent VN with a fun kinky premise. There's even a bit of a fun folklore snippet in there, though it did feel kinda small and rushed for the sake of getting to the porn. And... magical. sword. cock!

Giving this one a 5/5 creativity rating on account of the sword cock.

This one was just a fun, kinky time - it knows what it is, and it certainly doesn't take itself very seriously. I'd say it's definitely worth reading to anyone who enjoys these kinks (or who wants to see what I mean by 'the sword cock'), but doesn't have too much outside of it - which I think is a totally fine thing for it to be. 

I also wanted to shout out the way the creative sprite manipulations used to represent the transformation scenes - it was a neat little detail that made great use of the medium to convey the transformations, in my opinion.

A short, nice, fun, and kinky read for some (imo) quick arousal, almost too quick on how they went about it but eh. Anyway I don't really have much to say other than it's a good read. Nothing strikes out in the presentation other than the damn sword cock. But I do like how I'm not supposed to take this tooooo seriously but the discussion with Wyatt was a quick argument with quick solution as well that was fine enough. Also they're sweet about it so that was also nice. 4, 4, 3, 5,3.

The writing was light and gets me in the right mood, the sprites are well chosen. It was pretty funny too (I was wondering if someone was going to use the sword cock…) The realist vs believer dynamic between the boyfriends is a bit cliché but of well, it fits.

The presentation is a bit simple and there are some defaults in the way sprites are shown (the underwear appearing after Wyatt’s sprites sometimes while they should appear together; I feel like zooming in the backgrounds as well as the sprites would make more sense when shrunk…) Some places could have used sound effects (like the aforementioned sword cock).

The folklore is the cryptid they seek, so that’s pretty direct. The whole thinkg where nobody notices Zack is the automated peacock is still more baffling than funny (I guess the tail makes the peacock),

Overall, that was a fun little kinky rump. Nice job!