'Crimson Creek' is a fun, light-hearted, slice-of-life cryptid mystery adventure game. What impressed me with this entry is all the work that went into making this into a pseudo-adventure game, where you have elements of clicking on the bigger screen looking for clues, pulling up menus to ask characters about specific topics, and have the option to exhaust dialog trees to find little gems of interactions. It really helps immerse the reader into what is a fun little monster/mystery story.
You've got your protag duo, of Trent and Shane, couple of ghost hunter boyfriends. Trent's trying to do a youtube channel, while Shane's being supportive. They're headed off camping and coincidentally looking to get proof of the jersey devil. Shenanigans ensue when they're pretty sure they ran into the jersey devil when they were driving in. They start doing the camping activities, when they run into several colorful characters who are all affected by the jersey devil in some way. Trent and Shane have a bit of a fight when Trent is upset that Shane isn't as excited about hunting monsters as he is. They go in the middle of the night, and oops, turns out they got attacked and Shane saves the day. Also, somewhere in there, Trent and Shane go skinny dipping and then have sex in a stranger's house because horny, and I'm all for that. To be serious, I do think that while the idea and vibes of the visual novel of amazing, the story itself is rather... happening because the script says so? I mean in a way where scenes are leading into other scenes, not because the characters are following a set of clues that lead them on this mystery, but because a character shows up and is here to take them to the next location and info dump their backstory. I can understand that Trent is willing to go along with anything to get his scoop, but it's more like Trent is allowing the plot to carry him along than have it feel like it was going from one thing to the next thing naturally. Mac and Abigail seem like tutorial NPCs, if that makes sense. Sofie showing up by riding into Trent, feels like there was a note in the script that was 'Sofie is here' and there was no better way to incorporate her into the story. I think what I'm getting at is that there's a slight issue with structure and the set up, where it all feels to happen-stance instead of something the character's are actively pursuing.
The presentation is the game's strongest point. The GUI and the way the menus work make it a really nice set up for an adventure/mystery game set up. The characters are all well designed and really show off their personality. The main guys are also hot, I'm glad that this story takes time to remind the reader that this is in fact a my wolf/romance with a lil bit of smut here and there. I will say that I took a lil bit of issue with the dialog trees, where you have to continuously click the same choice to exhaust the information in that. Maybe something like a graphical indicator, like it's greyed out/line strikethrough might help in showing the player that a choice has no further progress, instead of randomly clicking it each time to see if something different happens. The art is really good, and the audio I think it pretty alright too. It makes for an immersive experience. The real life photographs mixed with the drawn clues was also a fun touch. I will say the writing is adequate, in that I understood what everyone was saying and how the plot was going. I think I got a lil confused when the POV changed from Trent to Shane halfway through, but otherwise I saw what you were going for. Maybe for an adventure game, some kind of graphical indicator which character you're seeing through.
The folklore aspect I really enjoyed, especially learning so much about the Jersey Devil, and the connection to a cryptid hunting youtube series. I like that it was a direct hunting of the jersey devil, going into the area that it was spotted and then just straight up looking for it after a guy has been tracking all the missing persons. Plus, I like that this story straight up confirms that it's real, and not some kind of conspiracy to a different plot. I feel like this was a fun and creative entry, with a couple neat twists and turns in the plot, but mostly in the framing of a mystery game. This kind of format would be great to use for other projects you may work on.
Overall this is an extremely impressive showing from HollowFox7, especially for a first time visual novel and game-jam entry. There's so much to like about this, and there's so much work and effort put into making the game run as smoothly as it did (the only hiccup being a soft-lock that is still able to be circumvented). From the art assets made, to the coding, to the writing, I'm blown away that it was done by a solo-developer. There's definitely room for improvement, mostly in the conceptualizing and writing-structure stage, but everything else is surprisingly top notch and well polished. I could definitely see the developer getting swooped up as a team member for future projects, or just continue getting better at solo developing. I'm looking forward to more stuff this guy puts out.