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Alright, last May Wolf '26 review! 

No sliding tile puzzles in this one. 10/10 no further comments.

...I suppose I should actually talk about this for real.

Very creative idea, as most FdRstar projects tend to be from my limited experience with them, and easily the one that best captured the essence of the theme. Not perfect necessarily, but this was still really well done and a great entry to close on. 

Implementation of Theme:

A+++. The whole thing is literally about how folklore itself is shaped and manipulated by its tellers and keepers for better or for worse. I'll get more into how that plays out in the "Story" section, but as far as implementation of theme goes, this absolutely crushed it.

Presentation/Writing:

Good, mostly, if a bit basic at times. No penalties for the use of stock assets in the folktale retellings, and this actually worked kind of well as a justification for using the same sprites, since folk figures can often be associated with multiple myths, as demonstrated by Mura and Urosa here. I want to give a special shout as well to the sprite manipulation with one of the witches gets caught in the snare. There wasn't anything wrong with the music per se, but it did seem weirdly loud without adjusting the settings and I thought it was a little distracting while trying to focus on the actual gameplay element. 

Text was mostly well proofread, though there were a few typos and instances of awkward phrasing that could've been things getting lost in translation. Tone was generally kept light throughout, though there were a few instances where I wasn't sure just how light we were supposed to be. There are some pretty heavy themes in the subtext here, and Chayon occasionally gets pretty heated about them, which makes gags like the wrong recorder picture feel a little random. Not really the biggest issue, but maybe that was some of the language elsewhere not conveying the tone the way it was intended instead.

Story:

It's a bit interesting to me that the game page for this entry states one of the central conflicts of this story, "The new generation doesn't know their stories aside from the "official" version that had been purged of anything deemed controversial," so explicitly, while in the VN itself this is buried in subtext. I prefer the latter approach, since it gives the reader an opportunity to learn and infer more about Chayon's traits, history, and biases as the process continues, but I also wonder if the reader is supposed to have that background in mind, and whether some might miss it if they were just downloading all the jam entries and didn't read that description. 

That all said, I think the complexity of folklore and the way it can be handled by different groups of people is well represented here. It's hard to know what the true "original" story is, with the archival versions incomplete and mostly focusing on adherence to religion, the "official" versions censoring or changing certain details to enforce the state's values, and Chayon's versions incorporating some of their own personal biases, experiences, and grudges against the state. 

I think it's interesting that Chayon's accounts of the tales sometimes mirror this theme within the folktale itself. In the archival and official accounts of the inventor and the automaton, the story is about maintaining control and the consequences of giving too many concessions to your creation, whereas Chayon's version is a defense of individual liberties, regardless of if the way someone chooses to use their freedom is what was envisioned by their creator (e.g., society) or not. Clearly Chayon takes issue with the characterization of witches as untrustworthy or evil as well, seeing them as a stand-in for being "othered" by a discriminatory government. That said, and maybe this is one of the things that kind of got lost in translation, but Chayon's moral of the second story doesn't really make sense to me either? Like "making people do their work" sounds kind of... overseer-y? I wondered while reading this compared to the other options if a better conclusion might be something like "cooperation is always better than being selfish". It's also never explicitly stated what Chayon's exact trauma is, but I did find it interesting that characterizing the witches as "charlatans" gives you an immediate bad end, though given the fact pattern of the story, this might not actually be the worst takeaway since while Mura was doing all those fetch quests, the village was still suffering and maybe he should have considered finding a third opinion. 

With all that said, I think there's some healthy nuance in the story's approach to Chayon as well. It's worth noting that you only get the special Mura ending if you push back against Chayon past a certain threshold. There are plenty of details in these stories that aren't all that important, like whether the witches needed flowers or mushrooms, but some of the changes made to the tales are Chayon trying to inject their own ideals to be normalized throughout society, which in itself isn't materially different from what the state did. It's up to the next keeper/teller of the story, in this case Homeka, to determine what's appropriate to keep and what should be corrected.

Creativity:

Not sure what else I can say for this category that hasn't already been said, but of course full marks here. This was a great implementation of the jam theme in a VN that also incorporated some unique gameplay elements to get its core themes across. Really great work here.

Final score of 10 adult Pinocchio puppets with functioning dicks out of 3 Geth that also have functioning dicks. 

"i still think bragging about not having tiktok after 2022 makes me cool"

Hey! I still don't have a TikTok and that makes me cool!

*sigh* ...no it doesn't... 

Don't mind me just gonna borrow the comment below mine's opener and say that this is by far the funniest entry in the jam, and I'll take it a bit further by adding that it's not even remotely close. I feel like I don't have a ton to say that's markedly different from anything anyone else has already said (on one hand, shame on me for not reading this until like the last day, but on the other hand, that's kinda thematically appropriate, no?) but this was really fun. 

Implementation of Theme:

Sure, we're covered here with the use of Egyptian (er, "Jackal Country") mythology for our isekai world. I guess you could make the argument that the folklore element is superficial and that any actual myths associated with Anubis are barely mentioned, but the mythological figures are still there, as is the aesthetic, and considering the stretches that have been made to justify the theme requirement being met in other entries, I feel pretty confident giving this one a thumbs up. 

Presentation:

There are a few mistakes here and there - obviously there are incomplete elements, which you're well aware of, and a few issues like Khufu's name tag appearing before we actually get his name, but the rest is pretty good! This is also probably the only entry where I can point out that the proofreading is a nightmare, but also note that it's actually intentional here, and I liked that. It helped keep the tone consistent throughout. 

Visuals were pretty great as well, and I liked the CGs we got, even if they weren't all finished. Yandere Shai was, uh, wild. One other minor complaint here, Anubis Dad's yellow text seemed to clash with the background during the graduation speech which made it difficult to read. I know there were some intentional errors due to the amateur fake film narrative, but that seemed unintended.

Story/Writing:

Not much to say here that everyone else hasn't already, but if you consider the fake film/VN/whatever production to be the A-plot and the actual isekai to be the B-plot, this works really well. Meta humor has generally grown stale for me over the past decade, but this is maybe an exception that proves the rule. I think a lot of meta humor relies on the fourth wall break itself to suffice as a punchline, whereas this VN shows a better way to handle this type of humor, where the fourth wall break or referential humor supports a joke that is funny on its own. 

That's not to say that this humor can't totally deviate from the narrative either - "like ma'am we dont care how cute your doodle-pit-husky-chihuahua-footfungus mix is its literally standing in the middle of the road waiting for a car to end its shit rn" made me pause the game because I was literally cracking up so hard. I guess another way to phrase this would be that this VN uses meta humor like an asset instead of a crutch. 

In terms of the narrative itself, the isekai characters are tropey because they're supposed to be, and we get just enough about the cast to give them slightly recognizable personalities, even if they end up kinda blending together. 

The overall premise might not have been the most ambitious, but the vibes were exceptionally well delivered. Just wish that all the routes had been finished so we could see that the death scene in the lazy fit ending was fake and was just Shai flopping. 

Creativity:

While the premise of "let's parody some FVN tropes" isn't the most original (there seems to be one or two of these almost every jam), the execution really elevates this one, and adding the layered story with the "real world" elements sells the humor even more instead of inhibiting it, which may have happened with a less talented team behind it. Full marks here, in my opinion. 

I guess I'll give this a final score of like 6😭s out of 7💔s idk.

There's a note towards the end of the VN that suggests the writing was rushed in favor of the presentation, and, well, yeah, I can see it. The previous 20 comments have said most of what I want to say, but my general takeaway here is that if you look at the thumbnail and really want to get banged by all those wolves and don't really care how you get there, this might be the one for you. 

Implementation of Theme:

There's at least a nod to it, but not much more than that. The "folklore" ask is theoretically met by the howling stones, which are purported to "bring people together," but this is barely brought up maybe twice over the course of the VN and feels tacked on just to meet the requirement. Like, you could have cut the stones entirely and nothing would have really changed. I liked the artwork for them though. Anyway, box checked, but barely.

Presentation: 

A lot of the visuals here were really good, especially the backgrounds and UI, and considering this seems to have been the focus of the project, I think you can be proud of that. The wolves were effectively palette swaps though (this is especially apparent in their images alongside the dialogue box where it really does look like the same face is just changing colors) and they could have used a bit more differentiation (even their dicks were pretty clearly copy-pasted). I really liked some of the little effects like the fur blowing in the wind though - that's impressive to have on such a short development timeline.

The sound effects worked pretty well throughout the VN, though there were moments when I feel like BGM could have been deployed to set the tone more than just the distant crashing waves and crackling of the campfire, like during the sex scene. The subtle sounds definitely ended up being a plus considering there was no setting to adjust the sound in-game though. 

As others have pointed out, I'm not sure what the rationale for using this engine was, but there are a lot of quality of life features common to Renpy that are missing here - audio preferences, saving, rollback, history, being able to exit at any time, etc. Unless there was something really driving your decision to go with something different, for accessibility, while Renpy is limited and not always the best, if it ain't broke don't fix it. 

Story/Writing:

I don't have a whole lot to say about the story here since there really wasn't much of one. Besides Bruno being slightly more wacky and chaotic than the others and Milo being slightly more levelheaded than the others, the wolves are mostly indistinguishable in personality as well as appearance and I think the only reason there's four of them is just so Pepper can have a train run on him. Pepper's personality is pretty much nonexistent too, so outside of some fairly generic banter and buildup there's not much to dig into other than the sex scene (which, as others have mentioned, ends up being effectively the same thing four times in a row, but getting marginally shorter each time). 

This isn't necessarily helped by how stilted the language is - I'm not sure if the script was translated from another language, but while it was mostly well proofread outside of a few noticeable errors, the dialogue consistently falls just short of feeling like it's flowing naturally. 

If I was to propose revisions here, if you wanted to focus a bit more on the participants, I think you could cover a lot more ground in terms of character if you reduced the wolves from four to two and fleshed out those characters more since they'd all be sharing the screen less. If you're really committed to the five wolf orgy, I have to agree with City of Sneps. If you're gonna go for it, go all out! You have a four-in-one sex scene - throw out a few more positions, have more than two participants going at the same time, end it in a bukkake, get weird with it!

Creativity:

I definitely can't fault the creativity in terms of the formatting and visuals, but as far as the novel part of this visual novel goes, it wasn't anything too out there. This could have left more of an impression if it got me more interested in the characters or went really wild with the sex, but right now it's totally fine for what it is. 

Full respect for opening your VN with a toilet flush though. Didn't expect to see (er, hear rather) that.

Final score of 15 shots of uncomfortably warm cheap vodka out of 4 visually identical lupine penises. 

"Sheriff's been in a tizzy since one of our lights got stolen" 

*nods and points* I understood that reference.

I liked this quite a bit! Like Vye below I also thought this was going somewhere radically different based on the content warnings, but I was pleasantly surprised that this leaned more towards cutesy existentialism (?) than body horror. Not that there's anything wrong with body horror, just like, stories where people just need a hug can be pretty neat too. 

Breaking things down by jam criteria:

Implementation of Theme:

Sure? Kinda? It's always a little tough trying to write insightful comments at the end of the review period once twenty people have already said their thing, but I kind of fall in with the consensus here. Like, I see the superficial elements - the names of all the characters as references to mythology/angels and the tale of the lumberjack, the fairy, and the twelve dead dipshits, but I'm struggling to see how those are fully integrated into the story. 

When Kali started retelling the woodsman story, I thought we were going for a reflection on how folklore is spread, with Kali bringing the story to different dimensions rather than the story being passed down through generations. That's kind of subverted when Kali's retelling sucks (even if it's still impactful to fungus El), and while that scene was really funny, it left me feeling like the folklore was a bit disconnected again since that story could've been anything. Like a few other entries in the jam, I think you checked the box here, but there were other VNs that integrated the theme into the narrative a bit more. 

(As I’m writing this I see on Discord that you’re preparing a whole Thing about the implementation of theme here, and I look forward to being corrected, but right now I still struggle to see it, sorry)

Presentation:

Mostly solid across the board here. Sprites, while maybe a bit cartoonier and more exaggerated than last year’s May Wolf, were expressive and effective, especially all the variations of El. CGs were few and far between, but what was there looked really good, especially the hypnosis scene. The two versions of the woodcutter scene using stick puppets for Raphael and the doodles for Kali were also cute and a good contrast to the art style of the rest of the VN, though the backgrounds also varied a bit in style, especially with Kali’s home dimension. I’m not sure why Kali’s sprite needed to be a reveal though, as opposed to being in the diner scene from the beginning, and I’m also not sure why the Els all feel the need to carry a basketball in their underwear, but I guess it helps to be prepared if you get pulled into a sudden pickup game.

Music was a bit weaker for me – I didn’t feel any tracks to be particularly offensive, but I do think there were some missed opportunities to better set the tone. Examples that come to mind are the normal, lighthearted and slightly goofy piano theme continuing into Kali’s and Raphael’s initial romance scene, when you could have gone for something more moody, and the first arrival in Kali’s home dimension, when you could have gone for something more tense and suspenseful (I think you already do switch up the tone once the zombie appears, but you could have made this jump sooner), and maybe more somber or reflective music when encountering Captain Keyes-ified El.

There were also a few noticeable typos here and there, but nothing that really inhibited my understanding of the story, and this is pretty standard for jam fare.

Story/Writing:

Like I said at the top, generally I liked this a lot. I think you provided just enough worldbuilding to support the premise without going into unnecessary detail (even if the detailed references to previous projects may have been just a touch indulgent) and you do a great job paying off a lot of things that are set up in the intro, like Kali’s dislike of horror movies and possibly his eating habits (I’m not sure if it’s intended, but I read Kali’s gluttony as a reaction to being dropped in dimensions where he didn’t have easy access to food, especially before he got his Jedi mind trick powers).

I think the intro is well-paced too, dropping enough hints to tease that this isn’t a straightforward romance and the mundanity of the diner scene not overstaying its welcome before we’re thrown off-course into the dimension-hopping supernatural plot.

That all said, if I had a complaint here, it’s that I wish the Els, or I guess El as a concept, got developed a bit more. Like, we can see that the various iterations of El are important enough to completely reshape Kali’s perspective on his very strange life, but I wish we got more of why he/they had that effect. We don’t really get much about any of them other than caring for other people and liking big dudes, and I find it a little hard to believe that there was nobody else out there that was also nice and potentially attracted to him. I suppose you could make the argument that Kali feels that way about the Els because they were the first ones he tried making an attachment with, but that also kind of circles back to the question of why he decided to do that, and could also undercut the importance placed on the Els specifically by the end of the story.

Explanation of the theme pending, I wonder if this was something where the “folklore” element kinda got in the way. Like, instead of spending time on the lumberjack/fairy story, maybe there could have been room for more development for Kali and Raphael’s chemistry.

I feel like others have already commented on the very concise writing style that seems to be pretty prevalent here, and I don’t have much to add other than wanting to specifically call out "My hatchet is sharp, and with a single swing it is also red." which is just an absolute power chord of a line.

Creativity:

I don’t really have any complaints here. Dimension-hopping polymonogamy is a fun idea that I doubt I’ll see again in the three remaining entries I still have to review, and the visual direction was simple but effective. I don’t know if I personally vibed with this one as much as City’s Light, but this was still a really solid entry.

Final score of 18 magician’s nephews out of 2 droids that aren’t the ones you’re looking for.  

Well, I certainly can't fault the ambition. From the disclaimer upon opening the game, you know exactly what you're getting into, and it takes some courage to tackle these kinds of themes. That said, while I don't think anything was handled poorly or disrespectfully, I think this one needed to be paced out a bit more, especially in the second half, to really deliver on this premise. 

Breaking it down by rating criteria:

Implementation of Theme:

This is probably the weakest part of the entry for me. I honestly think your best connection to "folklore" is through the "wolf in sheep's clothing" motif, which is rooted in biblical scripture that was later adapted to vernacular adages, but the addition of the Greek mythology aspect, seemingly just to check the jam theme box, makes me think that angle may not have been intentional (to clarify, I think Mary being a "wolf" as in a a danger, literally in sheep's clothing, is intentional, but the reference to that phrase's source material may not be).

Like some others have said, I don't get much from the inclusion of Greek mythology since the stories mentioned by the leads don't really mirror the narrative and it feels tacked on.

Presentation/Writing:

I like a lot of the ideas here, but the execution was hit or miss for me. BGM felt pretty passable for me, not particularly noteworthy or distracting, though I did like the pulsing track that was used whenever the script took a tense turn. The artwork we get for Mary is solid, but I felt like Lucy could have used a few more expressions since we really only have two characters depicted on screen and Lucy only gets a couple variations, one of which is the smile that looks maybe creepier than it was intended to be. 

I think color coding the backgrounds based on mood/perception is a cool idea (e.g., the school is green when Mary sees it as a safe space, the color fades once she's with Micheal, and the green tint is gone once she's given a "task" by Micheal and she can no longer use school as a temporary escape) but I think you could have accomplished this with some more subtle filters. I don't mind the sketchy, cartoony art style at all (I think it actually is a really interesting juxtaposition to how disturbing the story is) but with the heavy green filter, I had no idea what I was looking at in the first scene in the classroom. 

Writing definitely could've used another proofreading pass, and there was some awkward phrasing that made me wonder if there were things that were getting lost in translation. For example, real early on we have the sentence "The moment the teacher stops talking everyone starts talking" - you want to avoid using the same word twice that close together, and there are a few different ways you could revise this, like "everyone starts talking the moment the teacher stops," or "As soon as the teacher finishes, the class erupts in conversation". 

Another sentence I noted was "I just thought it was pitiful that you always spend your time alone" - the script acknowledges that Mary is being awkward here, but that still feels really harsh and I wonder if you intended it to be that way or if you could have used a softer word than "pitiful" here.

Story:

Like I said at the top, the hook here is really good. From the moment Micheal touches Mary's thigh in the car, you know where this story's going, and there are a lot of great little touches that really sell Mary's trauma, including the dissociation, possessiveness, and the very haunting final line of the bad ending where she hopes to never see Lucy again. The first half sets this up really well, but it really starts to stumble as Mary's relationship with Lucy develops. I know you have a comment response below about not doing well with "slow burn" stories, but this one really could've benefited from taking its time and exploring more deeply the impacts Mary and Lucy have on each other.

As it stands, both endings feel too sudden based on where these two are in their friendship. If Lucy is aware of the rumors about Micheal and has serious concerns about them, as we see in the good ending, it seems like a stretch that she'd feel comfortable following Mary home based off of like, one reassurance, especially since Lucy has reason to believe Mary is being manipulated. Even if she did go home with Mary, as Lucy is presented I don't necessarily buy that she'd willingly go off alone with Micheal instead of pushing back on that. 

Similarly, I think it would take a lot more than just a conversation or two to break down the years of abuse and trauma and begin to step out from Micheal's control in the good ending. Both of these feel rushed, and the story would be much improved if we got to see these develop more organically.

I also don't know if I totally buy the way the rumors themselves are presented. I get that bad people exist and that they often get away with bad things, but I find it somewhat difficult to believe that if it was that common knowledge that Micheal was a predator and Mary was spotting for him, nobody would have reported him, including his previous victims. I get that there's a perceived stigma around reporting sexual assault, but the way Mary's "friends" are depicted feels too heartless and cruel to feel realistic. 

Creativity:

I really can't fault you here. While I think the execution, especially regarding the pacing, could have been better, this was a really ambitious premise and I think this was a valiant effort at depicting the struggles of surviving abuse. For what it's worth, I did think this was a major improvement over your Novembuck entry and I think you're definitely improving your craft, so I hope you stick with it!

This one confuses me. Not in terms of like, plot or theme because I think I'm picking up what you're putting down (or maybe I missed it and I'm gonna get the ol' Big Dumb Dipshit hammer later), but more in how I'm reacting to it. I categorically don't give my scores in reviews because I feel like those aren't all that helpful as feedback and they may detract from anything else I have to say, but I feel like I have to here to kinda make my point. Between this year's and last year's jams, this is the second entry I've ever given a perfect score, but at the same time, it was like I didn't feel that strongly about it when it ended. It's objectively good, I just can't help but feel like it's missing something to push it into transcendent.

I dunno. I'll try to talk it through the best I can.

Implementation of Theme:

I guess I spoiled above how I'm reading this, since perfect score and all, but I think we're sufficiently covered here. I feel like I had to have had "Bermuda Triangle" spoiled for me at some point (maybe someone mentioned it on Discord?) but I immediately made a note about it as soon as the script mentioned going off course northeast of Cuba (though you'd still have to be waaaaaaaaay  northeast of Cuba to be talking about heading west towards Florida and not like, The Bahamas). I'm not really giving myself credit for the spot, but I think the Bermuda Triangle is an interesting and novel choice for folklore and it thematically jives really well about everything about Colin's life disappearing as he spirals further into depression and insecurity. 

Worth noting here I guess too that the whole "vampire" thing could also count towards folklore? Like, I get that Colin is not literally a vampire, but the use of vampire folklore as a metaphor for Colin losing a piece of himself isn't nothing. Maybe I'm stretching here, I don't know. Box checked for me anyway.

Presentation: 

The art here is very good. Everyone else has already said it's very good, and you know it's very good, so I don't know how much more I need to say about it. The script was well proofread with just a few minor errors throughout, but nothing too distracting (Colin seems to forget how many Ls are in his name sometimes). 

The soundscape was generally good as well, though if I was to gripe about anything here I wish we got a bit more explicit audiovisual tension as spooky stuff begins happening on the boat. We get really tense music in the final scene, but I wish there had been more of this earlier too so the presentation feels like it's building to a crescendo along with the text. Like, the script does such a good job of conveying Colin's fear as the navigation system and compass disappear, I just wish audiovisuals made full use of the medium to accompany that text. 

Story/Writing:

There's a kind of weird thematic parallel between this and Nat One where both are dealing with insecurity and depression, and the way every successive event just seems to beat you further and further down, but they couldn't be more different tonally. To oversimplify it, this is kind of like Nat One if there was nobody to catch you when you fell. 

Like my review for Clam Story (and apparently I'm just all about references to other entries tonight) I don't particularly care whether Colin's actually on the boat or if it's all-in-le-head or what, the thematic progression is the most important thing here and I think that comes through. The boat is reflective (irony!) of Colin's interpersonal relationships; one thing disappears, and it isn't really noticeable. But then things keep disappearing, and every time Colin tries to course correct, to find something else to lean on, that disappears too. 

Regarding Colin's friends, clearly they have some truly brutal lines in the VN ("Don't guilt people into giving you the pity you think you deserve" - fuckin' yikes), though I wonder how much of this is verbatim and how much of this is just Colin's perception of those people once he feels like he can't do anything right. This especially plays into my reading of Kurt - I agree with Pink's assessment that Kurt really isn't an antagonistic character, at least not in the same way or to the same level that Hunter is presented. Even though Kurt says some pretty hurtful things to Colin before his disappearance, he was there, and he did go with Colin even though he thought Colin was chasing a pipe dream. When you feel like you've done everything you can for a friend and they're still withdrawing or pushing you away, it can be easy to fall into that mindset, and come to the conclusion that maybe you are better off apart. But I think there's also a chance that if Kurt hadn't disappeared in that moment, and he'd had another opportunity, he still would have been there for Colin, even if Colin assumed he was gone forever. 

I'm kind of torn on how I feel about this, because the VN's relatively short length does help keep it concise and effective (and also limits the number of unique art assets required for this visual style) but I wonder if a bit more establishment of the "normal" before Colin's depression started spiraling could have been effective too. It feels harder to capture the fall when we're already starting close to Colin's lowest point, and I think maybe introducing the reader to good parts of Colin's life, then taking those away would have made the dread more impactful. You kind of already do this to an extent with Kurt, but the situation with Kurt is also clearly already tense at the beginning of the story.

Creativity: 

Yeah, I'm not sure what else to say here. The premise is great and the execution was really solid. There are parallels to some other entries, but this was incredibly distinct in terms of both visuals and prose. It's a very well done piece, and hopefully there was at least something of value to take away from that ramble. 

Final score of 12 mojitos out of 10 Cuba libres from me. 

Let me start out by saying that there's nothing wrong with stories that are more low stakes and limited in scope - maybe cozy little romantic dramas aren't the flashiest entries, but I think these kinds of plots are just as valuable as anything else, and to be honest, sometimes I look forward to these more than grand epics or suspenseful thrillers. Usually what makes one of these so interesting though is that the lack of a high-stakes A-plot allows for a more detailed inspection of the characters - who they are as people and what they mean to each other. Ultimately, I agree with some of the other recent commenters here in that this feels like a great foundation for a story, but right now it feels like just a foundation and there seem to be some missed opportunities to build on that and make this premise really compelling. 

Implementation of Theme:

We've certainly covered this category here, and in multiple ways, to boot. We have William as an imagining of a wasgo, a figure from Canadian First Nations folklore, and then the holiday/festival Gealach a' Bhruic, which gives some (fictional, I think?) folklore specific to the Scottish badgers. Both are well integrated into the narrative, and I think this does more than enough to meet the ask.

Presentation:

Decent category for this entry, if not particularly mindblowing. We get some of the best presentation right off the bat with the CG of the old wedding video - I love the little blur effect and how that scene builds intrigue for the rest of the VN (even if the wedding theme loop was a little short and repetitive). I didn't notice the music much for the rest of the story though. It kinda felt like the definition of background music, which isn't always the worst thing since, y'know, it is background music, and that's always better than being obtrusive. 

Other images were pretty solid as well, both in the sprites and the couple other CGs we got (I liked the tail wag for William too!). Still a few typos and other mistakes in the text, but this felt much better proofread than your last May Wolf, so that improvement is great to see. 

Story/Writing:

So like I said at the top, we have a good foundation here, but I feel like we're only scratching the surface of what we could do with this premise and these characters. 

I think one way to frame this would be to focus on the "whys" for these people. Like, okay, we have an arranged marriage and our leads feel kinda awkward about it, but is this a normal occurrence in this universe's Scotland (we get that it's normal for wasgo, but not necessarily anyone else)? Whether it is or not generally, how strange would it be for that arranged marriage to be gay (like, with a typical hetero arranged marriage, the calculus is pretty simple - one family gets a baby factory with good genes while the other gets a fat dowry. Does it matter to these people that their arranged marriage can't reproduce)? Is there any judgement from the local community about the gay arranged marriage?

This extends down to more specifics about the characters too - why did William's family conceal that he was male? Why didn't Brock's family ever ask for a photo or anything? How do these people care about being forced into marriage generally? Is their sense of cultural obligation that overpowering? If so, why? Why does Brock feel so lonely about Gealach a' Bhruic (yes he moved out of his parents' house, but he mentions extended family getting together for the holiday, so why couldn't he still do that? It's not like he lives far away)? Why has it taken the leads this long to have a conversation about the arranged marriage, other than William's hockey career ending prematurely (noting again that if William didn't agree to this, there would be much bigger concerns)?

I know that's a big list of questions, but I hope that gets across how much more ground you could be covering with this premise. The story right now is pretty short, and there are so many places where you could expand and really flesh out these characters. This goes for the writing style as well - there's some simple sentence structure and telling-not-showing here, and there are some real opportunities to stretch your legs with the style and really set the scene. 

One other structural comment here - there's a brief perspective switch from Brock to William, and I'm not sure what we get from this. This isn't something that ever happens again, if I recall correctly, and we effectively learn the same things twice from both perspectives -  the marriage was arranged to bring good luck to Brock's family at the cost of William's hockey career. The only thing we get that's different is that William doesn't resent Brock for it, which would probably be better to reveal during their interactions together anyway.

Creativity:

There's definitely some creativity here with the types of folklore that were adapted and integrated into the narrative, and the concept of a gay international catfish arranged marriage could be really interesting, but I think this really just needs a bit more of a push to really flourish. Keep sticking with it - this is still good progress from your last entry and I think you're on the cusp of bringing your talents together to create something really special.

Final score of 12 vintage Vancouver Canucks sweaters out of 8 copies of Jack London's "The Sea-Wolf".

Unfortunately, I don't think there's anything I can say in this review that can top C_Mooon's "Albert Clamus". That is just a Category 5 devastating pun. But hey, you know what, I'm gonna try my best anyway. 

So most of the comments here are some flavor of "I didn't get it," and sure, I'll be transparent and say that I probably didn't "get it" either - this feels deliberately obtuse, so that's likely part of the point. That said, I think "deliberate" is an operative word there - I think it would be a disservice to this game to call it surrealism for the sake of surrealism. 

I like chmron's approach here, and I want to give my own thoughts about my reading of the VN as well. Will I make a fool of myself in the process? Oh, yeah, for sure. But I did get something meaningful out of this, and I think it's worth sharing even if it's a bad take. 

Before we get into it though, I'll touch briefly on 

Presentation:

I mean, I thought it was pretty good, to be honest. There are a lot of eclectic choices here, but I think they suit the dreamlike, absurdist feel of the narrative. This is a VN that has both happy steel drum reggae and moody, melancholy piano pieces, and I think both illustrate the emotions their scenes are trying to convey. The art can be really striking - sometimes it's lighthearted and playful (I love the "woa" sprite so much) and that makes the sudden shifts to carnage or the world being on fire so much more impactful. 

There were definitely some proofreading errors here though, and as others have pointed out, this isn't particularly helpful when your text is already intentionally somewhat difficult to parse. 

I think the presentation generally got the job done though, and if it feels like I'm rushing through this section, I am, because I really want to talk about

All That Other Stuff:

I think there are a couple different ways you could read the actual "setting" of the story, and I think whether you interpret the island as physically existing in space somehow and the magic being real, or whether you see this as a kind of "Owl Creek Bridge" scenario where Cheery is contemplating their existence in their moment of death, or whether the island is some kind of supernatural purgatory isn't really material since the thematic throughlines are the real draw of the VN.

Ultimately, I see this as a meditation on agency, power, failure, and redemption. Maybe that sounds pretentious, but if you're still with me let me walk you through it for a minute. 

Our protagonist is someone who has never really had any agency in his life. He was in an army. It's a pretty nondescript army, but it's clear he wasn't the one making decisions, and while he had some regrets here and there, he was content being a follower. Once the God of Leaves begins to take over the world, the protagonist is chosen by the God of Leaves to work for him, rather than the protagonist seeking him out, and he continues to follow the god, putting so much faith in him that he calls him "Dad". There is no order that shouldn't be followed, even if that means snuffing out the lives of everyone in the vicinity of a volcano or sacrificing himself on a pointlessly suicidal effort to fight the ocean for little more than the god's whim. 

Once the effort fails, the god abandons him and sets events in motion that end the world. Finding the clam gives the protagonist an opportunity to finally make a decision for himself, something he wasn't ordered or guided to do, but he can't do it. 

Lacking their own agency, he creates a fantasy for himself. Not just of the physical setting of the stereotypical deserted island, but also of an authority figure. The player, like Leeroy, is a construct of the protagonist, someone to make his decisions for him  so he bears none of the responsibility. As the story develops, the player choices become fewer, then eventually drop out entirely as the protagonist accepts the responsibility for guiding his own path. 

Of course, you can't live in denial forever, and the fantasy is shattered by the indelible scars left by the God of Leaves on the earth. At that point, the protagonist begins getting the first notions of responsibility, but he doesn't recognize the opportunity. It's strange and unfamiliar, and the first instinct is to just pass the buck. Give the clam to the wolf, and no matter what happens it's not your fault anyway because you literally didn't have an option not to. But that doesn't work; it only leads to pain and suffering. 

So the protagonist tries again, and this time he begins to take more responsibility, remembering some of the objects emblematic of his guilt, as painful as they are to touch or even see. He's beginning to have accountability, both for himself and someone else he cares about, and then he's given the axe. A chance to use that tool that caused so much guilt and pain for something he chose. And whoops he fucked up and killed the wolf because he didn't really know how to handle that yet.

But the protagonist keeps making progress. He kicks out the "god" he invented for himself and he really digs deep, engaging with the reasons he holds so much guilt, the ways in which he failed. And of course, he fails again, since that meant neglecting the other person he was supposed to be looking out for. 

But eventually, he gets it right. He figures out a way to confront his own demons and finally become his own person. Rather than the speaker, on the final round, he is Cheery. He has actualized to the point where he not only has his own identity, but can take on the burdens of others as well. The wolf isn't just the wolf anymore, he's Leeroy (or whatever Cheery chooses, because that's a decision he can make). And once Cheery can make those choices, and have that agency, he can take that a step further and grow to love and appreciate someone else rather than just follow them. And at that point, out of the shadow of his past, he can finally make the choice to move beyond this life and the burning world left in its wake.

To put this back in the context of the jam theme, maybe we put too much emphasis on "folklore." We have legends and gods, and we want to follow their example, if not their lead directly, because their agency feels like it has more weight than ours. When the God of Leaves tells you to do something, when he gives you that power and calls you "son", who are you to say no? But to quote the text, "Gods are just people." Power over someone else doesn't mean you know what to do with it, and the God of Leaves is just as susceptible to human impulses and flaws as any mortal. 

As comforting as it can be to put your faith in something else, you still have the ability to choose for yourself. And that choice may not always work out as you intend. How many times did the God of Leaves or some other deity fuck up the whole world and cause it to end in a big fucking fire? How many more times are they going to do it after this one stops burning? It took Cheery four tries to figure it out, but eventually he did, and I think that's important, because it implies that there's hope that the gods will too. And not to get too sentimental about it, but in a world that constantly seems like it's on fire, maybe having that hope that no many how many times you fail, one day you will get it right is a powerful message. 

Or, like, hey, maybe none of that is even remotely supported by the text and I'm doing a bunch of heavy lifting for an author that didn't intend any of that. What do I know, I'm not even a real opossum.

Final score of 12 shellders out of 4 bowls of chowder.

Also if we ever do a clam-themed VN jam can we call it Pearl Jam

*Checks notes.* 

*Looks back up at screen.*

*Checks notes again.*

This was your first try? Well damn, okay.

I have a few gripes here and there, because I hate fun and always do, but especially for a first attempt this was a staggering home run and it's honestly one of my favorites of the jam.

Breaking things down by criteria:

Implementation of Theme:

Sure, I think this meets the ask. I've mentioned in a couple other D&D entry reviews that fantasy on its own doesn't necessarily qualify as "folklore", but this VN solves that issue by making the campaign based around Arthurian legend rather than generic high fantasy. If I had a complaint here (at least in regards to this specific category) it would be that the folklore aspect matters much more for the B-plot (the campaign itself) as opposed to the A-plot of the actual people, especially Tyler, participating in the campaign. Even with that though, the two halves are intertwined enough with the game being a reflection of the cast's struggles and interpersonal dynamics that I don't think it's really a problem.

Presentation:

This was really good! I liked the music choices a lot here, as well as the various sound effects that you incorporated. Using italics as well as little dice roll effects was a great way of denoting when someone was taking a game-related action instead of general roleplay without breaking the flow of the narrative, and I thought the shift to black and white in the background and color in the foreground to shoe the game being "paused" was effective as well. 

There was a mix of stock and unique assets used here, and I think you got as much mileage out of both as you could. There's no penalty for using the stock assets obviously, since that's what they're there for, but part of me does wish that you were able to provide your own since what was original was so effective. I really enjoyed the expressions for the voice of god and how those came back in stages during the introspective "chapter breaks" and in Tyler's final breakdown before being "rescued" by Tristan. 

The manipulation and blocking of the sprites was really great here too, with some really interesting kinetic elements like trying to dig out of the cave, as well as more mundane effects like Tristan's very satisfying tail wag (though this unfortunately tended to be partially obscured by the dialogue box). 

The text was well proofread, which is always great to see, and I want to give special props to the termination email. Every part of that was just dripping with sarcastic vitriol, from the placeholder name, to the empty corporate platitudes, to the tone deaf exit survey,  and all the way down to the comic sans Bible verse in the signature block. People can point to the sprites and the eyes and the butterfly all they want (and I encourage them to - I also just did), but that email was a work of art.

Story/Writing:

I think one of the best compliments I can give this story is that out of all the D&D-flavored entries I've read for this jam, this is the one that feels the most real. This entry really nails the group dynamic, including the asides, the mistakes, the little petty spats, and the eventual conclusion that despite all the very human speedbumps these people still care for each other in a way that feels distinctly natural (pun intended). Outside of Tyler, the characterization isn't the deepest in the world, but for the scope of the project I think you did a good job of conveying distinct, concrete personalities for the party without getting into too much detail to bog down the narrative. 

With that said, I think there were a few parts of the VN where the narrative was getting bogged down in the campaign itself. While the "game" and "real" stories are interconnected, there are parts in the middle of the VN, especially in the post-Josh gameplay segments, where we might be delving too far into the weeds of the campaign. I think I see what you're going for here, with establishing a baseline "normal" for that session to contrast with the eventual arguments and distractions that come later, but I think you still could have gotten there if you had pared the gameplay segments down a bit since the central intrigue of the A-plot did seem to be spinning its wheels for a while. 

Before I focus on the A-plot, I thought the scene of Tyler returning from getting the pizza from the delivery driver and overhearing the rest of the party talking about him was a bit contrived. Like even if his friends were really insensitive, which wouldn't really track with how they're portrayed elsewhere, I just don't really believe this group would be dumb enough to start complaining behind Tyler's back in the literal one minute it would take to walk to the front door and back. I wonder if this scene would have been more believable if Tyler was just imagining them talking about him behind his back as he got the pizza as a symptom of his insecurity, rather than another cause. 

Turning to the A-plot, I think this VN does a really great job of capturing insecurity and shame, even, and perhaps especially, when those feelings are totally irrational. It's really easy to kind of fold into yourself so as to not be pitied or feel like a burden, and then just keep spiraling without any outlet to keep you level, and I think Tyler captures that phenomenon very well. If there was one point that I think could have used some more stress, it might be the breakup itself, since that seems to be the "butterfly" that set the rest of Tyler's misfortunes into motion, at least according to Tyler for the first 80% or so of the VN. As of right now though, there's barely any mention, if any at all, of Damien between the intro and Tyler's catharsis with Tristan, and this seems a bit odd given the amount of stress placed on the "butterfly" in the interludes. 

At first I thought resolving the insecurity plot by having Tyler and Tristan get together romantically was a bit too indulgent, and while I do still think it's indulgent, I don't hate it. I think you did a good job keeping that moment grounded rather than leaning too hard into sappiness and sentimentality, but I do wish there had been a few more hints setting up the romance other than the pit sniffing conversation played for laughs and the fact that this is, indeed, a May Wolf VN. 

Creativity:

While I think the constituent building blocks of this narrative (e.g., D&D campaign, exploration of insecurity) aren't necessarily the most groundbreaking plot threads, I also think this VN is well and truly more than the sum of its parts, and the care and detail with which you crafted this narrative is more than enough for me to rate this highly in terms of creativity. 

This was a really spectacular effort and I enjoyed this a lot. 

Final score of 12 AW101 helicopters out of 5 annoying talking cats from Persona. 

Another jam, another Fuze thing. Get you a partner that loves you the way Fuze loves briefs.

Others have said most of what I want to say, but if there's any dev I would feel the worst about half-assing the review for, this is probably it, so I'll do my best to add something to the conversation. Generally, I thought there were some fun ideas here, but the way those ideas were delivered felt a bit more janky than I think you intended and that resulted in a final product that felt good but not great. 

Alright, let's do the thing:

Implementation of Theme:

Yeeesssss...? Kinda...? Like, okay, sure, Eugene and Ryley are supposed to be Fujin and Raijin, and the spirit world is generally supposed to be representative of Japanese (Zyupanese, whatever) mythology, so at least at a basic level, the box is checked, but my issue here is that Eugene and Ryley don't seem very connected to the myth we get about them other than their names. 

Like, unless I'm misreading, the intro tells a story of people calling on Fujin and Raijin to work together and repel an armada, but Eugene and Ryley are presented as a (partially subverted) typical sports rival anime dynamic. You can make the argument that humans (mortal furries, whatever) can't comprehend what the spirits are really like, but I feel like you could have tweaked the intro myth to make it fit the narrative a bit more, or the other way around. Like the connection is there, but it feels kinda weak, and otherwise I don't see any material distinction between the spirit world being specifically related to existing mythology and it being just any generic isekai alternate reality in terms of plot, characters, or worldbuilding. 

Presentation:

This was good though, so let's talk about that. The music here was absolutely killer and was one of my favorite soundtracks in the jam. Even when I was pausing to take notes and stuff I was grooving to the background tracks, many of which were pretty catchy and none felt tonally out of place to me. 

Visually, I think the sprites and backgrounds all worked well, and there was plenty of color and variation to keep things interesting, even though there were no CGs if I recall correctly between the cliff and the tournament other than the sex scene. Much like most of the rest of the VN, even without the CGs, the sheer volume of images here was insane given the jam constraints, and the tournament montage was exceptionally realized. It's stylish, kinetic, and engaging, and I think it worked really well! There was some really fun spritework too, like the bouncing effects to denote walking down the street. 

That said, I do kinda wonder why the cliff hanging scene got a CG? It's only on screen very briefly and doesn't seem that much more important than any of Kameron and Ryley's other interactions? I wonder if that effort could have been redistributed to another action scene or maybe some tension with the demon tornado thing.

There were some typos and grammatical issues, but I thought this was generally much better proofread than last year's May Wolf entry, so kudos for the improvement. 

Story/Writing:

Okay, before I really get into it, I just want to note that some of the characterizations of D1 football programs in this were absolutely whack, especially if the story takes place in 2026 (presumably it's at least close since there's effective live translation on the characters' phones). I'm not going to go through my list of grievances about that since adherence to college football realism is clearly not the point of the exercise, but football is very much one of my Things so I decided you needed to hear about it. 

Two things that I did want to specifically point out on the subject though are 1) I'm starting to get a bit tired of lines like "I think I'll stick to my socially accepted interest, sports." Like, at this point in the evolution of humanity, we've had NFL players do their Sunday Night Football intros in Naruto headbands and track stars doing hadoukens on the starting blocks. Can we please stop pretending like being an elite athlete is mutually exclusive with liking dorky shit? At this point it's more trendy to be interested in that stuff than not. 2) The line "I thought I'd stick out like a male cheerleader" is so bizarre. Like major college athletic programs have had male cheerleaders as long as they've had cheerleaders, and this is not unusual.

Focusing on the story proper, I'll concur with basically everyone else on the spirit language. "Conlang" is a new vocab word for me, but I had similar comments in my notes. Like other assets provided for this project, the effort involved is insane, and ultimately a bit wasted on something I inevitably started skipping through anyway. I agree with blue's points below about it maybe being more valuable if this was an extended, serial project, but for a jam VN you're basically writing a movie and not a TV show - every line you spend on neo-spirit-Zyupanese is a line you could've spent on literally anything else (or just cut since this was the longest entry in the jam).

I see what you're going for since there's some subversion of anime tropes going on here, and most isekai gloss over the language difference to the extent that it's addressed at all, but there's also kind of a reason for that. Like even with a very long (and arguably bloated) movie like Project Hail Mary, the language difference is resolved through a like two-minute montage sequence because, while dealing with that would be realistic, it also gets in the way of the main plot and themes you're trying to convey, and this VN has enough ground to cover on its own without that detail. 

On the subject of anime tropes, I did like some of the other subversions, like the sports rival actually being a pretty nice guy, and I thought those were pleasant surprises. That said, I found the progression of Ryley from going from Kameron, someone completely unfamiliar with this sport despite some superficial similarities to playing offensive line, putting his dick in the dirt on the first day to Ryley somehow becoming basically an Olympic gold medalist by the end of the week by doing some medicine ball exercises to be a bit ludicrous. 

There were a few other plot points that I felt could have been fleshed out more too, like the third act breakup between Kameron and Ryley and Ryley following Kameron through the gate. I felt like the "breakup" was just rushed across the board, with Kameron leaving Ryley at the hot spring without really giving him a chance to explain himself, and the inevitable reconciliation coming way too quickly after storming off like that. I also don't see much of a point in the one choice that follows that reconciliation, since, as far as I can tell, it doesn't affect anything anyway and there aren't any other choices for flavor text in the game. 

Ryley following Kameron through the portal felt tacked on and abrupt, with very little explanation given for the implications of a spirt showing up in the real world. Also, like, get fucked, Lou, I guess. Kameron gets his boyfriend to come live with him forever, but Lou doesn't get his girlfriend. Seems a little unfair, but whatever. I really feel like all of that sequence, from Kameron not having a conversation with Ryley after the tournament to the suddenness of the ending, were more motivated by worrying about the word count than anything else. Maybe it's just me being allergic to fun, but I kinda think just leaving it a bittersweet ending would have been much better thematically than forcing the indulgent "happily ever after".

One area that I think actually maybe benefitted from worrying about the word count was the tournament itself though. The most common sin of the "tournament arc", in my opinion, is getting too bogged down in individual fights to the point where it goes from exciting to dull and repetitive, and I think thematically doing a montage was the right way to handle this. However, I think this format may also have been necessary since, as detailed some of the worldbuilding is, I feel like the strategy and techniques for neo-spirit-sumo aren't actually all that thought through, which is why the fight summaries are basically just "Ryley kicked that guy's ass! Then Eugene kicked that guy's ass!" It's also kind of another knock on the conditioning sequences as opposed to strategy since the latter really should have been the point that close to competition, but it just feels like that part of the game doesn't really exist.

Creativity:

I think there's a fair bit of creativity here in trying to subvert some of the tropes of the very tropiest genre ever, and the worldbuilding (where we get it) and the focus on the isekai part of the isekai rather than just using the alternate universe as an worldbuilding hack to get the reader invested into the setting are all welcome. Obviously the implementation of the created language was very creative, but I do wish some of that creativity could have been applied elsewhere to further tinker with the tropes you were playing with throughout the story in more interesting ways. 

Final score of 5 chunin exams out of 3 grand magic games. 

Before I get into the review proper, considering the comment below mine I just want to make a NOTE FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE NOT PLAYED THIS YET - there is a soft lock problem, and it's been a known issue for quite a while. There is a thread on the main game page with a workaround so you don't get stuck :) 

With that out of the way, it seems like there's a couple of these every jam - entries that try to go above and beyond to incorporate really neat gameplay elements but just don't have the time to execute those under jam constraints. As others have noted, the ideas here are great, but this probably would have been better as a normal project with a longer development timeline rather than something that was rushed for the jam. 

Implementation of Theme:

"Folklore" is very comfortably covered here with the incorporation of the Jersey Devil myth. The target monster, and cryptids in general, are a primary focus of the narrative, so the theme is well-implemented. Full credit here, moving on.

Presentation: 

Like much of the rest of the game, what's there is good, but suffers from scope creep. There was clearly a serious amount of effort that went into shaping the interactive components of the game, and those sequences, including the menus and exploration screens, look really well done (up until they kinda drop out in the final act, but we'll get to that). The art looks really good here too! Lots of variations in sprite expressions, and I like the monster design, as little as we actually get to see of it. Text was predominantly well proofread, with relatively few noticeable errors. 

While there was nothing wrong with any of the music tracks in isolation, I did feel that there could have been more variation in the music, especially to better establish tone. We'll touch on that more in the story section, but for a story that purports to at least partially be horror, this could have used some more tense tracks to sell the eerie parts rather than having the BGM be so lighthearted most of the time. 

There were a couple issues with the dialogue name tags. First, I think someone else pointed this out as well, but even though previously unknown characters like Sofie and Abigail start off as ???, Mac immediately appears as "Macaulay" before we learn his name (though I don't think we ever actually get a proper introduction for him anyway?). The text colors for Shane and Terry are also too similar. Since these are the characters with the most screentime, these should contrast much more sharply. It's a little thing, but I did lose track a couple times early on of which character was which. 

Aside from the noted soft lock problem, there are some other issues with the gameplay segments and how they convey the story. I don't love having to choose the same "talk" options multiple times to advance the conversation, but if you are going to do that, I think that could have been signposted a bit better. The character profile screen probably shouldn't be updated until after you've properly interacted with a character (e.g., Abigail's entry stated she didn't believe in the Jersey Devil before we'd had any conversation of substance with her), though to be honest I'm not sure it was ever actually used in gameplay at all anyway. I'm not sure how, but going through the clues with Sofie instead of the talk option first completely skipped a conversation, so Shane mentioned finding Maria before I knew who Maria was. 

Introducing the clues mechanic early on also sets you up for trouble later on when most of the investigation options are dropped, presumably due to time constraints. It was a bit frustrating that when questioning Abigail you couldn't just show her the picture of the monster, since that would have changed the whole conversation and seems like the logical thing to do given the way the mechanics were introduced. 

Story/Writing:

Similar to the other aspects of the VN, there are some good ideas here, but it gets pretty messy after finding the campsite (it's actually a little messy before then too, but the pacing is at least workable up to that point). A main problem with the narrative is that the tension stops building and kind of plateaus after meeting Mac. Like, we start off at night, encountering the Jersey Devil in the road in a sequence that could have been more tense, but at least establishes the danger. Then, after some hiking, we meet Exposition Dispenser #1, Sofie, who builds the tension by giving more details on the local Jersey Devil mythology and gives the leads personal stakes by asking them to find her sister. The leads then find the abandoned camp, further increasing the tension before following the stranger back to his cabin, at which point everything just kinda grinds to a halt. 

Like, what do we really learn from Mac? He collects a lot of info about the Jersey Devil being real, but we already know it's real. We have the picture. He points out the flaws in Shane and Terry's relationship, but these could have and should have been explored differently. I'll touch a bit more on how I think that conflict isn't really well characterized, but Shane and Terry's cryptid-related arguments could have developed organically without Mac having to explicitly explain the conflict to Shane, or I guess more realistically, the audience via Shane. 

For that matter, I have no idea what Abigail's purpose in the story is. I think there was supposed to be more development with her backstory with Mac, but we don't get much about her other than that she's a skeptic who works for Mac. Maybe there's some history there, like she's a former partner or something (not sure how old she's supposed to be), but after talking to her, when Mac says that we should know why he cares so much, I really felt like I did not know that and questioned what the point of talking to Abigail was at all. 

While I wish this had more time to develop so all the characters could be fully fleshed out, if you were to keep this scoped to the jam, I would cut Sofie and Abigail entirely. Cutting Sofie allows Mac to be the sole exposition dispenser, thereby giving him more to do in the story. It also removes the personal stakes with Maria, which, you might consider to be a bad thing, but considering that plot thread is completely forgotten about by the climax, would probably improve the narrative by not having it at all (it is a bit whack that the story ends abruptly on such a happy ending when Maria and like 12 other people are possibly dead), and it removes the broken leg plot point, which also gets forgotten for most of the runtime until getting like one line in the final chase sequence that doesn't have any material impact on the scene since the Devil drops a tree on Terry and Shane saves the day anyway.

Keeping the cast and scope smaller could help keep that tension building, but I understand that commitment to the investigation gimmick was probably the driver for including those scenes with Sofie and Abigail.

Returning back to Terry and Shane's dynamic, I never really bought the conflict. Setting aside that I didn't really buy someone being like, relentlessly bullied for seeing something spooky in the woods in middle school, the whole thing about Shane not believing in cryptids seems pretty forced and contrived when they literally have a picture of a real, live cryptid. It was kind of baffling to me that Mac told Shane he should be honest about how he feels about ghosts when all three of them know cryptids are real. There are also a sprinkling of other character beats that don't really make sense either, like both of them following Mac without question and Shane expressing discomfort about spending the night in Mac's house immediately after having sex there like it was no big deal. I recognize that I seem to have a habit of calling out gratuitous sex scenes, so some of this may be personal preference, but I did feel like it further disrupted the pacing of the story to have a lighthearted, steamy sex scene when we're ostensibly supposed to be building to the imminent climax of the narrative. Like, it really just didn't seem like the time for that. 

The ending was also generally very abrupt, with little tension surrounding the monster, the monster seeming way to easy to beat considering its body count (nobody brought a pocketknife to the woods and thought about stabbing it in its glowing red eye before?), and a jarring lack of denouement, but as stated a few times above, I think it's understandable where the rush came from. 

Creativity:

I really can't stress enough that I love the idea - I really liked going into the profile and evidence menus and seeing all the interactions for each. The Jersey Devil is a fun idea that's been underutilized outside of a few low budget found footage films, and using it as the premise for an investigation-based mystery/horror is great. For what looks like your first effort, this was still exceptional work, but it really needed a lot more time to cook to deliver on what you were planning for this story. 

"WolfKart" is great though. I'm imagining a universe in which Wolf O'Donnell somehow became the mascot for Nintendo instead of Mario, and that sounds like a lovely world to me. 

Final score of 12 Martin Brodeur facemasks out of 1 Last Broadcast.

Alright, so, the store page for this one mentions it's a tribute to Slay the Princess, which is both an ambitious aim, and, at the moment, a bit of an ambitious claim. As others have pointed out, one of the main draws of Slay the Princess is its scale, including the number of responses you have and the vast ways you can shape the story. That really isn't present here, as, certainly in this build but even as routes get fleshed out, structurally this is a pretty standard non-kinetic VN with a few different routes.

However, the best way this project does align with Slay the Princess is its clearest reference. While Slay the Princess opens with "This is a love story", Death and the Thief of Stars opens with "Do not be misled. This is not a dating sim of either gods (sic)." Maybe it's just because the story isn't finished yet, but I think some people might be missing how important that statement is and the way what is presented isn't always entirely true, like Slay the Princess.

I want to get more into that, but before we get there let's take a look at some other rating criteria.

Implementation of Theme:

Yep, requirement met, easy. I had absolutely no knowledge of Filipino mythology before now (actually I'm not sure that's true, I knew what an aswang was but you get the idea) but some brief internet searching confirms that Libulan, Liadlao, and Sidapa are all real figures, and even if they weren't, this story is grounded in mythology more than enough to meet the "folklore" theme. Full credit here. 

Presentation/Writing:

I thought the presentation here was pretty impressive across the board. Full disclosure, I didn't listen to any of the voice acting since it often bothers me more than helps me with VNs, but that's a personal issue and it's still commendable that you managed to get all that recorded and implemented within jam timelines. The BGM was also great across the board, though the initial track especially seemed to carry on for a bit too long and I would have appreciated some more variety. All the tracks were really distinct and memorable though, and it's clear how much effort went into each one. Like oh my lord was the theme for the first encounter with Liadlao in the jungle a banger. 

The visuals were generally strong as well, with the backgrounds being effective and Libulan's sprites (both costumes) working well, even if I wasn't sure what exactly his fur color was supposed to be in the veiled version. Liadlao, on the other hand, did look a bit goofy to me, especially when compared to Sidapa's depiction on the main menu screen. Like, Sidapa is built like an absolute brick shithouse and I found it just a little hard to believe that he'd be so intimidated by Liadlao, fire powers not withstanding.

There were a few typos and other errors throughout, but the script was well proofread for the most part and really only needed another read-through or two to catch the remaining errors (the grammatical error in the intro warning about the game not being a dating sim is rough though - that's the kind of thing you really want to double check since it's so prominent). The writing itself did trend a bit too verbose at times though, and I think, along with the proofreading, this could have used another pass for general editing. For example, "The cassava will take a while before it cooks, and then we can eat once it's ready." could be cut down to "It'll take a while for the cassava to cook." - the second part is already understood and this flows much more naturally.

Story:

Getting into the meat of the narrative, unfinished projects are always tough to evaluate for jam criteria. The good news is, I think I see where we're going with this thematically; the bad news is, I think that maybe because of the order the routes are being implemented, that vision isn't coming through very well for everyone.

Looking at the other comments, I'm seeing a lot of framing of Libulan as entitled and unsympathetic, and, maybe I'm getting the whole thing wrong or something, but I feel like people are kind of missing the point with these characters. I'm seeing a few references to Libulan getting Liadlao's husband killed below as a reason for this, so it may help to start by breaking that situation down:

1) Liadlao killed Lang. Yes, Liadlao blames Libulan, and he wants Sidapa (and the reader) to take that at face value, but it was Liadlao's spear that killed him. It's classic tragic irony - trying to avoid fate is what caused it to play out in the first place. If Liadlao hadn't been so focused on divining the future, Lang wouldn't have died. 

2) There are multiple references to the inevitable mortality of humans. Even with the stars intact during the day, Sidapa, the god of death, still had to deal with death every day. Predicting the future with stars isn't saving anyone in the long run or stopping death, it's just shuffling the timing around in limited cases. (Also, it's not clear why the astronomers couldn't just read the stars if they were at night rather than during the day if they really needed to be focused on the predictions, but that's a bit tangential to the point). 

3) It is, at best, unclear the extent to which Liadlao really, like really cared about Lang. We hear later that Liadlao has a whole army of spouses, and even when he's talking with Sidapa during the ending, he brings up two entirely different spouses. Does he care about all those spouses? Sure, he seems to, at least, but only temporarily before moving onto the next thing. Hell, he's already flirting with Sidapa in that scene. The stars, mortals, and even other gods in Sidapa's case are just possessions, they're mirrors to tell Liadlao how awesome he is. Libulan never gets any of that because he's literally relegated to the shadows for all eternity. Like compare Liadlao directly asking if Surendra mentioned him on the way to the afterlife to Libulan asking if Liadlao mentioned him when talking to Sidapa. Both want to be seen and acknowledged, but Liadlao is asking to reinforce what he already knows (or thinks he knows) while Libulan is desperate for someone to notice him at all. 

4)  It doesn't pertain to Lang so much as the general interactions between Sidapa and Liadlao, but it's also worth pointing out that Liadlao is a textbook manipulator. He's slick, charming, patient, and affectionate, and he'll tell you nice things and give you head pats (even if he negs you for how bad your star dog sucks) as long as you do what he says, and he'll threaten to kick your shit in if you don't.

Like, let's be clear here - there is a clear imbalance between Liadlao and Libulan. Liadlao does get all the power, all the recognition, all the spouses, and all the admiration while Libulan is expected to thanklessly do his job. Liadlao is analogous to a billionaire telling a 9-5 wage slave to shut up and be happy he's getting paid a living wage. Yes, Libulan could have handled the situation better, and yes, stealing the stars the way he did may have been wrong, but he does have a point, and if you're totally on board with Liadlao you're kind of proving it.

This isn't really meant to paint Liadlao as the bad guy either - both brothers' traits are totally understandable given their circumstances. Liadlao is selfish, egotistical, and arrogant because everyone has been telling him his shit don't stink for his entire existence. Libulan is weaselly and conniving because he's been isolated and sequestered his entire existence. He doesn't know how to trust, he's insecure, he has no self-esteem, and he doesn't know how to communicate, because he's been on his own wallowing in the shadows for millennia. 

This all leads back to the starting quote and where I think this is supposed to go. This is not a dating sim. Both brothers are deeply flawed due to a system they didn't initially choose, and are too ingrained in their ways to see things from each other's perspective. Sidapa is a neutral arbiter that is tasked with doing the right thing rather than siding with one brother or the other, and that will likely take the form of a compromise that lands somewhere in between, that neither one could have seen on their own. It's just hard to know that for sure, and hard to see at all, when it's not actually in the text yet. 

I know that was more of a rant than an actual critique, but I felt like I was going crazy here so I just had to let that one rip. 

Creativity:

Yeah, I can't fault the creativity here at all. Maybe Slay the Princess is a lofty ambition, but there's a lot already present in this build to like. The characters are well-realized (at least to me), and the audiovisual direction is intentional, inspired, and vibrant. I'm not sure where the final scope for this project is going to land, but I hope this team can see out their vision because I think they're cooking something special. 

Not sure what was up with Libulan getting like, demoted to pig at the end though. Might be some offended boars out there, I don't know. 

Final score of 19 asses out of 12 wangs from me. 

Well, shit. 

There are a few issues with the writing style, which others have touched on and I will as well, but this is about as close to an unequivocal backboard-shattering slam dunk as I've seen in this jam. This is kind of the epitome of a jam VN - very short and limited in scope, but every frame is purposeful, intentional, and poignant. It provides just enough detail to convey the emotions at play without getting bogged down (mostly, and I'll get to that too) in worldbuilding it doesn't really need.

I said something along these lines during Novembuck for Proxima Protocol, but it bears repeating: I am seriously impressed with the massive strides you're taking with every new project. 

Going to break this down further, but this one warrants a spoiler warning:

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Implementation of Theme:

Yeah, I mean, take your pick. There's the rites of Forefathers' Eve themselves, the characterization of Wolf's deeply personal experience as another piece of folklore conveyed to Lucas, and even some other references to folklore thrown in during Lucas' closing internal monologue. Honestly, I'm not sure you really needed those last pieces - this story was already dripping in the folklore motif throughout, and adding new terms like "Likho" just a few lines before a very emphatic ending felt unnecessary. You could have had Lucas get to the same point in his musings without introducing new terms to make the language harder to parse. The requirement was clearly met here, though. 

Writing:

Speaking of language being hard to parse, that's maybe the one real issue in this VN. I understand the tone you're going for, but readability is important too, and there were numerous instances where the language really could've been simplified instead of going for the most complex syntax and vocabulary you could think of. Everyone and their brother has mentioned "saline solution" and purkka already listed about 70 other examples, so I'm not going to linger on this point for too long, but just as another quick and simple edit, you can take something like "Long, long before the grand crosses decorated the apexes of any chapel in any town." and chop that down to "Long before grand crosses decorated the chapels in town" without losing any of the immersion or general vibe of the narration. 

One other quirk that I noted here - perhaps I missed something since no one else seems to be mentioning it, but sometimes Lucas is referred to as "P" and I don't know why. Not sure if this was a placeholder from a previous draft that made it into the final edit.

Presentation:

Great. Good. Spectacular. I loved the subtle SFX throughout as opposed to more conventional backing tracks. The shift from the crickets and crackling of the fire to the buzzing of the wolf's tale to the distant popping gunshots of the ruined city was really well done and set the scenes well without being overbearing. Yes, the final effect was extremely loud, but I didn't necessarily mind that? To be fair, I was also playing through speakers and not headphones, so maybe it was excessive through certain peripherals. Even if you were to turn the volume down, I think it's a really effective full stop for the narrative. 

Art was similarly excellent from my perspective, and I thought the UI was unique. I like the immediate impression of the Start button on the pyre, but as someone who (perhaps ironically, given the previous paragraph) likes to adjust the sound before starting a game, I'm not sure how I feel about not being able to access the settings immediately. Art-wise, the middle sequence especially stands out, with the sun literally tearing through the paper the wolf is drawn on, though other images like the wolf's face being blurred out as he rushes towards Lucas are also very impactful, especially with the full picture of the narrative in mind. 

Besides the issues noted above, the script was generally well proofread, which is also always good to see. 

Story: 

As stated a few times by now, I think this was incredibly effective. I caught onto some of the story beats very early on, like Lucas talking to no one at the start, Lucas dying, and Lucas being the sun and all, but the actual reveal of the current reality was still a very well-delivered moment that I didn't really see coming. 

There are moments when the narrative might get a little too bogged down in the folklore aspect instead of just letting the relationship on-screen speak for itself, but really, this VN does a great job of getting its themes across. We have the pain of losing someone close to you, the pain of facing your own mortality and losing yourself, and the ability to find hope even when all hope seems to be lost, even if that's just through carrying someone's memory. It's beautiful in its simplicity and I think we get just enough about these characters to feel the weight of their emotions without disrupting how those emotions are conveyed. 

I usually have like five pages worth of notes for "Story" in these reviews, but I really don't here, to be honest. This was really tight and well done.

Creativity:

Wildly creative, down to the UI, the art style, the audiovisual imagery in general, and the way the theme was implemented. Aside from those minor points above, this really was exceptional from the top down. If you keep improving at this rate, the sky really is the limit for what you can produce. 

Final score of 120 sheets of graph paper out of 1 9mm shell casing. 

Well, it's a start, and I think sometimes it's underappreciated (and I am very often guilty of this) how much of an accomplishment it is just getting something out there. That's a huge step, and you should be proud of your first release. That said, this is just a start, and as of right now, there's not all that much to bite into here. I'll break things down by rating criteria:

Implementation of Theme:

From my reading, there are a couple different angles that meet the "folklore" requirement here: you have the forest in the MC's origin world, which has a legend about those who enter it being unable to return, and then you have the loosely defined prophecy in the isekai world, where the fabled heroes will unite to take down the Big Bad. Either can work as an attempt to meet the theme, but neither is really fleshed out at this point. Presumably we're done with the suicide-kinda forest, even in future builds, since we've already been squarely chucked from that world, but the prophecy is really only mentioned at a high level too. Presumably that will be integrated more into the plot as the story progresses and the leads gather the rest of their party, but right now there... isn't much of a plot, so it's hard to say the theme was cleanly implemented. 

Presentation:

This was probably the strongest area for this VN, though there were a few hiccups as well. Audio was serviceable, with really only two BGM tracks for the build, but neither felt particularly obtrusive. There were some (I think) campfire SFX upon arriving in the new world that seemed to appear irregularly and I'm not sure why they were applied when they were.

There's limited art here, but what's there is actually really solid. I like all the CGs that we get - looking into the MC's reflection in the puddle, Wage creating his magic sword, and the flash of the neon silhouettes of the other heroes all looked good, especially the last two with their use of the very distinctive bright color scheme. I also really liked the more cutesy style used to represent the author in the direct address to the audience at the end of the build - I wouldn't mind seeing a VN using more of that style, to be honest. 

As others have pointed out, the script needs some substantial proofreading. There are errors all over the place, and while I won't harp on all of them, I do specifically want to point out the opening sequence. We get one word at a time, centered against a black background: "Dark." "Cold." "Quite." I'm assuming the last one was supposed to be "quiet," and if there's any time you really need to make sure that you're free from typos, the first impression of your VN, when the words are isolated and literally front and center, is it. 

Story/Writing:

As alluded to above, there's not much of a story here yet. We realize we're dead, we meet a supernatural symbol of some kind in the void, we get isekai'd to Furry World, and then the rest of the VN is basically just direct exposition about the world we've arrived in. There's hints to the plot to come, but we're still at a point where nothing is really developed - we know very little about our character and his motivations, The Eye of the Curse and their motivations, or even about Wage, other than that he doesn't like the evil government. 

As others have pointed out, there are some missed opportunities for "show, don't tell". Before we even get to the void and the isekai world, this one might actually be a bit stronger if we followed the MC as he entered the forest and suffered his eventual demise. This would be an opportunity to flesh out some details about the character, like what he was struggling with and the extent to which those things were affecting him (right now it's unclear whether the MC actually intended to die - there's the legend about those entering the forest never returning, and he was looking for an easy way out, but he also tripped and fell into the lake on accident and appeared to be avoiding drowning, at least initially) and, more importantly, establishing the tone for the piece. There's a bit of a disconnect from the way this VN opens, with the "dark cold quiet" intro and the introspection on mortality and regret, and the conversation by the campfire, which has fourth wall jokes about the story sounding like a furry VN. The script isn't that long, and I think it could use some more consistency on exactly how seriously we're supposed to be taking this adventure. 

There were some missed opportunities pertaining to the Eye as well - I thought it was at least a little surprising that the MC didn't have any follow-up questions about the Eye's side of the deal being traveling with them in the new world. You'd think one would want to better understand the motivations and consequences associated with that rather than taking it at face value, but maybe if the MC was established as impulsive or desperate to live again that would have been easier to digest. I also found it odd that the MC never questioned at all where the Eye was after he arrived in the new world considering traveling together is part of the deal. The MC clearly remembers everything up until this point, so even if the implication is that they merged or something, some indication that the story didn't like, forget about that plot point would be helpful. 

Last point here, as others have pointed out, I think some of the MC's reactions could have been toned down. I'm not the strongest supporter of fourth wall meta humor in general (I feel like it's played out and has to be very well executed to land), but some lines like "MAGIC IS REAL?" feel a bit unnecessary. Like, the MC died, met some kind of deity in a void, and was reincarnated as a furry. How is magic possibly surprising at that point? 

Creativity:

Like the other areas of this VN, it's kinda halfway there. There's definitely an attempt to build a setting for your story to take place in, but the actual narrative we have so far is more or less paint-by-numbers isekai. It's a good foundation to build on, but there need to be some twists in the formula to set this apart from similar stories. 

As I said at the top, despite all the feedback, this isn't bad! I'm happy you want to keep working on this and building on your ideas, and I encourage you to keep writing and building your style. 

Final score of 8 tutorial NPCs out of 4 truck-kun.

Man, I don't know what to do with this one. Maybe this is one that's too smart for me, but this felt just a bit too muddled to truly land as I think it was intended to. I'll try to break down my thoughts the best I can.

Presentation/Writing:

Yeah, let's get this stuff out of the way early. Some other people didn't have as much of an issue with the presentation, but I thought this was a weak point for the VN. I know this is a very meditative, contemplative piece where there's not a lot of action or motion going on, but this is still ostensibly a visual novel, and the only visuals we have are a couple of static backgrounds that are basically just changes in brightness and one silhouetted, completely static sprite. The background music remains the same throughout the VN as well, even playing behind the rain SFX, which is the only other audio outside the main menu. Granted, it's a personal quirk, but highly repetitive sounds bother me, and since the one backing track was just a short, endlessly repeating sequence, I had to turn the music off to be able to focus. As others have pointed out, there were missed opportunities for other SFX as well - considering how prominent the bell is, having a ringing effect would have been very welcome. 

What really kills me about the audio/visual component is that the "Will You Remember Me?" piece absolutely nailed the music and even included a visual effect that was really effective. This is by far the best presentation in the VN, and I feel like 80% of the people who play this won't even see it. I almost didn't until I forced myself to come back and find all the endings, and even then I don't know if I would have been able to if passiv_boi's and Fuze's comments didn't drop some hints about what those endings entailed so I could tailor my choices accordingly. Like, just coming into this blind, if you don't know how the endings are determined, there are thousands of possible combinations of answers you could choose for the branching paths, so it's kind of intimidating to figure out when you don't know what you're looking for. I'm glad I did go back, because that note was quite touching, but a little more guidance would have been appreciated.

Writing I thought was pretty high quality here, especially considering this was translated from Chinese. Like, I don't think I saw a single typo in here (maybe some weird phrasing early on though) and in this short of a timeframe that is seriously impressive. Mechanically, as others have pointed out, there were some structural choices that could have been used more sparingly, like the "not [x]. not [y]. just [z]" construction. I pointed this out in another review as well, but that specific construction comes up a lot in AI-generated prose and it's difficult to unsee. I'm not accusing you of using AI, but that's just another reason to try to keep your syntax varied.

Implementation of Theme:

I mean, it's there, kinda...? What we have here is sort of an inspection of the concept of telling stories itself being the story, like less the actual folklore and more of the conveyance of folklore. This may be stretching the premise a bit (and naming the virus "FOLKLORE" is a bit on the nose...) but I can see the idea. In a way it's even a rejection of folklore considering the "true" ending questions the value of a story that doesn't remember where it originated, or its human component more broadly. It gets a little messy with the dementia parallel though, and I feel like the closer we get to the "true" ending the muddier that throughline gets. 

Story/Creativity:

Yeah so let's talk about that dementia throughline. Let me start out here by saying that, as someone who has unfortunately had to see Alzheimer's play out in real time on multiple occasions, you get it. Lines like "love that had outlasted accuracy" felt particularly poignant, and it's hard to convey the emotions of caring for someone who has long since stopped being the person you knew in recognizable form.  

On first read, I thought the story was entirely a metaphor for this phenomenon - the MC, or the player, was falling into dementia, just like their mother, and the wolf was a reflection of their self. The "story" was emblematic of their failing mind, with the MC's possible responses to it representing acceptance of their condition without question, denial of the inevitable, or passively clinging to what they could, and regardless of how they approached it, eventually they would cease to be themselves and only continue to exist as part of stories others told about them.

And then I checked the game files and saw that this was actually about an SCP mind virus.

I... don't know how I feel about this. I mean, sure, obviously those parallels are still intended with the loss of the self to the Story mirroring the loss of the self to the disease, but there's no indication of the sci-fi component within the text itself, and you're really relying on people snooping through the game files to get that (though yes, you are admittedly going to get more of those people through a game jam where a higher number of readers than usual are people already familiar with sifting through Renpy files). The hidden ending also doesn't really have an explanation without knowing what the Story is, so even if a reader lucks out and gets it, they'll be lost unless they've read that one text document. 

I think this VN might have been just a bit too ambitious in what it was trying to accomplish. The pseudo-SCP angle kind of limits the effectiveness of the meditation on dementia and the persistence of memories in others rather than the self, and I feel like it's just not developed enough in the text to really stand on its own. It's a creative idea - this whole VN is. The way the UI is designed as a metanarrative in itself is testament to that. I just think this might have been a bit cleaner if you had dropped the mind virus thing and just left the wolf not fully explained and open to interpretation. I think that would have suited the highly philosophical approach taken by much of the text rather than making the Story like... adversarial, for lack of a better term. 

I didn't dislike this (okay I did dislike the audio) and I don't think you should be disappointed in what you were able to produce for the jam; it's still impressive that you managed to put this out in the time you did, especially in translation. I just wish it was a bit more cohesive, and maybe a bit more user-friendly to get all the endings and plot out of it. 

Final score of 9 remakes out of 7 adaptations. 

"This was supposed to be a quick and silly horny idea" Yes! Check.

"but I feel like it grew into something more." Mmmmm respectfully I don't know about that one, boss.

This one didn't do much for me, but, as is often the case with the hornier entries, I also accept that I tend to be out of the target audience for this kind of thing. 

Implementation of Theme:

Hvcho Capko appears to be our link to folklore here, which upon some light internet searching appears to be a cryptid based on Seminole tradition. That's neat! Unfortunately, it's also a bit underutilized, with its reference in the LARP session being more or less superficial. That whole scene is really just setting up the conversation between Ezra and Harvey, the photo, and the subsequent third act breakup, and the "plot" of the LARP session could have been pretty much anything and nothing would have changed. There's definitely an attempt here, but it feels a little tacked on to hit the theme requirement rather than integrated into the narrative in a meaningful way.

Presentation:

Presentation was solid here. No penalties for stock assets here obviously and they were used about as well as you could, getting the most out of the costumes and expressions you had available. Music was mostly fitting as well, though the intro did seem a bit off. Maybe a bit too casual for how angry Ezra is supposed to be in that moment, and a bit of tension in the music could have conveyed that a bit better. Not really a major complaint though. 

Writing was mechanically impeccable, too. This was very well proofread, and I don't think I caught a single typo here. Maybe that doesn't sound like much, but I'm like 75% of the way through the entries now and I think that's the first time I've been able to say that, so I think it is commendable. Really solid category here, not much else to say.

Story/Writing/Creativity:

Merging the rest together here since they're pretty intertwined in this case. The story is based almost entirely on a string of contrivances that had me questioning at various points whether this was supposed to be parody or not. Like, some of the stuff is so over the top like the sequence of popping a boner, immediately deciding that taking a shower is the best way out of that situation (for some reason?), there only being one working shower, and the guy that made you pop a boner deciding that you should shower together because you played sports, even though this is like the second time you've ever interacted, but some of the emotional moments are played so straight that it's kinda hard to tell? I think if this was supposed to lean into the humor, it wasn't really coming through for me, and if it was supposed to lean into serious emotion, that wasn't working either. 

If there's anything that jumps out as an actual problem, it's the way Stella and her mom are written, to the extent they are at all. Stella is characterized as a one-note turbo jerk that only shows up in a couple scenes to be overtly rude (which is not how actual manipulators tend to act, but whatever), her mom seems to be similarly painted in a bad light, with her not even showing up for Stella apparently, and Ezra's friends refer to Stella as a few variations of "manipulative bitch." I don't think this was the intent, but characterizing the only female characters present in your story as one-dimensional bitches came off just a little misogynistic to me. 

This kind of begs the question for me of why Stella is even a girl to begin with though. Like this story doesn't really feel all that interested in exploring coming to terms with your sexuality - Ezra comes out the gate thinking about dicks and asses every ten seconds and, despite being ostensibly straight until like yesterday, flicks Harvey's nipple piercings, eats his ass, and calls him a slut like he's been doing this for years and not someone who's having their literal first gay sexual experience. Setting aside the fact that the whole idea of revenge fucking someone's parent is really messed up and uncomfortable to a level the VN doesn't really engage with beyond the briefest of nods, if you were determined to use that plot, why not just make it Ezra's boyfriend's dad? All the other awkward moments with the age gap and the ex connection would still be there, you just save yourself a step and avoid the accidental misogyny.

Others have touched on this as well, but the side characters were generally underdeveloped, if not completely undeveloped. Aside from Stella, who, as discussed, isn't so much a person as a nebulous embodiment of Ezra's ire, the rest of the D&D group kinda just... exist? They provide occasional peanut gallery commentary and contribute to the aforementioned third act breakup contrivance, after which they completely disappear, but that's about it. I don't even know if I could give a baseline personality trait for any of them. Given how much of the script is playing RPGs together, I think there are some missed opportunities for character development and associated comedy, and if you really weren't interested in utilizing those characters, I wonder if some of the D&D scenes could have been cut down to focus on the actual plot and leads. 

At the end of the day though, it's mostly just a porn plot. If banging your ex's dad, with a heavy focus on said dad's signature dad bod, presses all your buttons, you'll probably have a good time with this, but I don't think it goes much deeper than that. It didn't really land for me, but I'm glad others seem to have had a much better time with it. 

Final score of 8 magic missiles out of 7 other magic missiles that are clearly just shaped like dicks.

Well let's start off here by confirming that you should absolutely go ahead and send it on Part 2 - this was a great hook and I'd love to see it concluded. That said, these are always tough to judge for the jam. What's there is good, great even at times, but it's hard to evaluate something as a story when only half the story is there and the VN practically cuts off mid-thought. 

To the extent that we can though, let's get into it:

Implementation of Theme:

I mean... kinda? There's at least a reference to "The Boy That Cried Wolf" towards the end of the build, but there's not really much building on that here, at least not yet. You have a comment response below stating that there's supposed to be more building on that theme in the back half of the story, and yeah that makes sense for sure, but as far as assessing what's currently present in the text, it's a bit sparse. I think the idea, with the focus on lies, is that Ren has an MO of baiting and blackmailing rich people for their money. They lied to Tom, and they lied before Tom, but are they lying to Lucan? Or is the "wolf" really there this time? Maybe I'm losing the metaphor, but, like, I can see it, it's just not all there yet.

Presentation:

Art and sound are pretty good here! The sound is subtle, to the point where I wasn't noticing it much for better or worse, but I never felt taken out of a scene by misplaced music or awkward silence so that's definitely a positive. There are a few different art styles at play here and I think they're all effective - the sketchy closeups for Lucan in the intro and Ren in the alley, the sudden shift in palette and detail when Ren realizes they're with Tom, and the softer sorta watercolor-y (I am not a visual artist and it shows, I'm sorry) sprites for Ren all do excellent work in conveying tone and the general unease that permeates the VN. 

Text was a bit more hit-and-miss here. Quite a few typos, mistakes in names (the Lisa/Jane one is big, but there's also at least one line that's supposed to be Lucan's that's attributed to Ren), and some really inconsistent uses of quotation marks in dialogue (including at the end of narration lines for some reason?) suggest this definitely could've used another proofreading pass, but I also understand that getting things polished on jam timelines is difficult, especially when the story itself isn't even done yet.

As others have pointed out, this VN went a bit overboard with the mid-line cuts. I was a bit confused why the default text speed was set so slow, but maybe that was why. Regardless, those quick cuts can be effective, but are most effective when used sparingly. The number of times this was done here got a bit tedious, and for some of the occurrences I'm not even sure why it would have been used. Like why does "I stand up too." need to be a quick cut? Might be worth pointing out that you can indicate someone is getting cut off in conversation by just adding a dash or something rather than using the actual Renpy modifier, and you can save the latter for particularly important sequences.

Story/Writing:

Like I said at the top, it's a bit hard to talk about since we're still firmly in the rising action here, but it's certainly a good hook. I wasn't particularly surprised by the twist (I actually could've sworn the game page outright stated that Ren wasn't totally stable, but it doesn't) but the actual sequence with Tom was really well done. The sudden shift in perspective maybe could have used a bit more signposting since it was sudden and there hadn't been anything like that in the story up to that point, but the sequence was really tense and suspenseful, as well as a great character scene to show just how ruthless and manipulative Ren can be. 

This is the kind of story that's just begging for a second massive curveball though, which makes this so hard to evaluate. As it stands, Lucan is a bit too empty of a character to make it believable that Ren could actually be legitimately interested in him (and don't get me wrong, this isn't a bad thing - this characterization seems pretty clearly intentional to set up Lucan as Ren's ideal mark), but Lucan just walking headlong to his proverbial and/or possibly literal death seems way too simple for what this story has been putting down so far. 

There's also the matter of the title, which to this point doesn't seem to have a connection. We know Lucan is a deer and has a wife named Jane, so there's at least a possibility that there could be a Jane doe (lower case "d", at least). Of course, there might be an as yet unknown connection between Jane and Ren that could play into the "unknown person" meaning of Jane Doe. That could explain how Ren knew how to target Lucan and why they might not actually be trying to screw over Lucan the same way they did Tom. Plus Lucan hasn't known of Jane's whereabouts for quite some time apparently, and maybe that detail about Jane specifically objecting to the chocolate cake isn't entirely irrelevant. This is all most likely totally baseless, but fuck it, Ren is my Pepe Silvia now. 

Creativity:

Yeah, I'd say this is pretty creative so far. There's some really interesting audio/visual direction going on here, and while the "My Wolf Boyfriend to Death" plot might not be the most original high concept, execution really matters the most on this kind of thing and this is a really intriguing start. I don't really have much else to say here; hope we get to see the rest of it.

Final score of 10 ice cubes out of 7 easy Es.

So wolfururu mentioned The Mortuary Assistant in a comment below and that's where my mind went as soon as I saw the premise for this one as well. Unfortunately, if we're going to stick to a video game analogy, the short length and breakneck pace of the VN leaves it feeling more like one level or sequence in a bigger project than something that feels complete and fully developed. I didn't dislike this, but I also think there's a lot of room to further develop plot and characters, as well as presentation here. Breaking it down further:

Implementation of Theme:

Sure, this one meets the ask. We have the folk legend about putting a coin in a corpse's mouth to do some spooky shit to reveal their killer, and said spooky shit does indeed happen after Michelle does the thing. There are a few details that are unclear or unexplained, but for the purposes of this rating criterion, I think we're good to go.

Presentation/Writing:

First off, there is some real quality art here, especially the wolf on the autopsy table and especially especially the first CG at the bar. The sprites look decent too, and while I do wish there was more variation in expressions, I get that producing a lot of assets under jam pressure is tough. 

The shifting text box to follow the speaker in dialogue scenes felt interesting and original at first, but lost its appeal and even became a bit distracting as the VN went on. I think it's a neat idea, but maybe it should be saved for specific scenes that best suit it, like the intro scene in the bar where two characters are in one spot, having a straightforward conversation, and the shot is framed so they're each on one side of the screen facing each other so the tennis match dialogue box looks a bit more natural, and then just use standard dialogue styles for other scenes.

Also regarding the dialogue boxes, I'm not sure why Ricardo's name tag for dialogue is just "Iguana" when we know what his name is. Don't know if that was a holdover from a draft that didn't get changed, or just an error. 

Sound was noticeably absent for large swaths of the VN, and this is a real killer. The story was a bit underwritten here, which I'll get to in a bit, but generally you can get away with a simple plot and characters in a horror piece as long as the suspense is done well. If you're going to go that route though, you absolutely need visuals and audio to build dread about what's coming next, and that's not consistently present in this VN. 

I will reiterate here as I do whenever there's an entry written by a non-native English speaker that writing in translation is extremely difficult and I respect the effort and dedication to get your work out there despite that. That said, there were definitely some parts of the script where things might have been getting lost in translation. While the VN wasn't difficult to get through per se, there were lines that were pretty difficult to parse, and I think that may have contributed to several other commenters (and me too, probably) not fully understanding what you were trying to convey.

Story:

Alright, so the core concept here is pretty straightforward. We have two friends working in a morgue while there's an oppressive regime running things, a jerk soldier shows up with a corpse, one of the friends says "hey I bet that jerk soldier killed this guy", they do a superstition magic trick, it turns out that jerk soldier did kill that guy, and the jerk soldier gets hit by a car for his trouble. 

Like I said above, the plot doesn't need to be overly complicated here, but it's pretty thin as is, as are the characters. Jorge and Michelle barely have any distinguishable personality traits other than Jorge being more cautious and less superstitious, maybe, and Damasceno is almost entirely one-note. There's actually a bit of a paradox for me here since we get more of a feeling for what Jorge and Michelle are like from the frame story than the main narrative, but otherwise I feel like the frame story is mostly superfluous. While I want to reinforce that the bar CG is cool as hell, I do wish that some of the time and effort spent on that scene had been reallocated to fleshing out the main narrative. Like, maybe just start in 1973 and give Jorge and Michellle a few more interactions, before, during, and after the haunting, maybe add a few with Ricardo as well. Once the haunting starts, maybe have a few encounters with Damasceno to show how he's slipping and how the relics of his misdeeds are driving him insane. 

To touch on those relics a bit more, I think I see the vision here, with each of the objects Jorge finds being something related to Damasceno's actions. The envelope is some sort of bribe, maybe paid to the wolf to keep quiet, and because he didn't "do what he was told", Damasceno's marriage blew up, hence the ring, and the wolf was killed in a similar manner to the horse, who is implied to have also been killed by Damasceno. Damasceno is then killed by a car because that was his way of killing his victims. I can also see the impetus for keeping those details subtle, but I think having a few more scenes with Damasceno present and reacting to things (even if he's cagey or in denial) could make it easier to make those connections, and also just make the setup flow better. Like if the haunting is ostensibly for Damasceno because he's the killer, why is all the evidence being chucked at Jorge, who doesn't know what it means? Maybe if it was Michelle getting that stuff it would make more sense since she at least caused the haunting in the first place, but Jorge doesn't really track for me. 

Honestly, I think the best way to have done this story would probably be to cut the frame narrative and have the whole thing from Damasceno's perspective. Have him come in with an air of authority, then have him collapse as he's haunted by his memories and the audience is filled in on what actually happened. Damasceno finding out about what Michelle did could also lead to a secondary conflict there before he eventually meets his poetic demise. I know "aha you've been playing as the bad guy the whole time" is becoming a bit trendy now, but I think that sets up a much more interesting delivery on your premise than what's currently here.

Creativity:

Despite the critiques above, for a second (that's what it says in the VN's outro anyway - I only see one entry on your itch page) attempt this was still pretty decent. There are a lot of good ideas here - the terror of Operation Condor-era (or I guess slightly before then in this case) oppression in South America is underserved in pretty much every genre, let alone furry horror VNs, and I think these stories are absolutely needed in South America's current political climate. I think you have some good horror/thriller instincts and general writing abilities, I'd just want your next project to take those ideas a couple steps further.

Final score of 10 buckets of blood out of 1 new set of tires.

I think the best word I have for this project as a whole is "frustrating." Like everything I've read from you (and I'm not caught up - I've been telling myself that I'm going to read The Theatre tomorrow for two months now. I will after the jam I promise) I am constantly impressed with your creativity and panache in direction, especially when it comes to gore and visual horror generally, but your writing also consistently lacks nuance with the very heavy sociopolitical issues and character beats you seem to be drawn to. To put it more bluntly than some of the other commenters, this was a hot mess. A very stylish hot mess! But a hot mess nonetheless. 

Let's get into it:

Implementation of Theme:

Yeah, it's there, or close enough, anyway. I'm not sure if werewolves really count as "folklore" within the context of the universe since they're pretty generally accepted as a common occurrence and have been for quite some time, but we also have the whole Moon Spirit thing going on so there are a couple of angles you could go with. Looking at my notes, there's also a thin frame story element where the prologue is alluding to this whole story now being a legend after the "Werewolf Revolution", and to be honest that element is so underbaked that I forgot about it until just now and it seems like it's tacked on just to make doubly sure you hit the theme requirement. I'm giving you points here with the note that I think other entries did handle this category more effectively.

Presentation:

So, sure, there are some issues here and there, like your characters still tending to have a degree of same-face-syndrome, but the audio/visual direction was exceptional here. As I stated at the top, you clearly have a talent for grisly body horror, and this came through in full force, with the CGs being truly effective, limited as they were compared to some of your other projects. Beyond the visuals, there were some really inspired audio choices, like using the guitar stingers instead of cliche horror strings, and while the title sequence was a bit on the cheesy side for me, I really admired the vision to just send it and I thought the technical execution was great. That said, I feel like a lot of those really slick, stylized choices seemed to fall off after the first act, and I feel like they were a victim of jam constraints. Besides the issues with the story itself, which we'll get to, I think this is another great motivator to keep your scope in check - one of the best things about Route 19 was its ability to pack so many punchy visuals into such a concise, contained story, and I think you're losing out a bit on your greatest strength when you get too ambitious with the scale of your project.

Just want to quickly note as well that, par for the course for your projects, this was impeccably proofread, with only a couple typos that I noticed. For a story this long on such a short timeframe that's commendable and I appreciate the attention to detail. 

Story/Writing:

I don't even know where to start with this one. Maybe since I made a point about scale above, let's just begin there.

My general theory towards overt social or political commentary is that while there's nothing wrong with writing about these issues, no one is forcing you to write about them, and if you are going to make the decision to tackle those themes, you need to give them the time, respect, and nuance that they require. This VN tries to hit practically every social malaise of the current era: werewolves are an allegory for homosexuality, but then also maybe the trans experience. But they were also persecuted by the Confederacy and are publicly lynched, so there's racial undertones as well. And on top of that there's a religious conflict between Christianity (taking elements from various Southern evangelical sects as well as LDS, apparently) and the Moon Spirit. And then we also have implied sexual assault, with the female lynching victim... police brutality... conservative attitudes towards general vice (both through the reference to the establishment being "anti-booze" as well as the "War on Werewolves" potentially being reminiscent of the War on Drugs)... mass shootings, and it's all starting to get out of hand. There's a point where this starts to feel less like a coherent narrative and more like a 25,000 word blog rant about everything wrong with society. It's messy, and you're trying to hit so much at once that you don't really have the time to adequately address any of them.

I'll try not to be too repetitive of what others have already said, but the "primary" allegory here, with the gay/trans experience, is a false equivalency, since in the real world, LGBT people are not causing any real harm to the people that discriminate against them, but werewolves here are (when the script wants them to be) legitimately dangerous and actually killing people. There's a sort of chicken/egg issue since it's not really clear where the violence started (the prologue suggests there's like an evil government conspiracy to frame the werewolves, but werewolf prejudice has apparently existed since at least the Civil War, so I don't know how feasible that is), but at least from the casual observer's point of view, people are getting killed by werewolves, and that makes them a real, tangible threat. Like, when Oliver kills Luis' assailant, all the second human sees is a werewolf ripping someone's throat out, and Oliver's actions eventually lead to this person's presumed death as well after their car crashes into the river, and Oliver never really contemplates this.

Everything involving Oliver's alignment with the werewolves is too sudden and too forced. As others have pointed out, there's no choice to begin with as "become a werewolf forever or suffer a horrible fate where the 'normal' werewolves will kill you even if the humans don't" isn't a real choice. Furthermore, there's a litany of problems with the scene where Luis takes Oliver to the lynching site. First, from a worldbuilding perspective, there's no way Andy/Oliver would not know about the frequent lynchings in this very public place, so the scene comes across as contrived and didactic. From a thematic perspective, lines like "The humans held a barbeque where they tried wolf meat" characterize the humans as almost cartoonishly evil, and this, along with Luis' insistence that "humans are filth" and that Oliver essentially must join the werewolves despite his pending "choice", come across as indoctrination and intentional radicalization that isn't markedly different from the religious absolute anti-wolf extremism of the humans, but it's excused because the wolves are the Good Guys in the story.

It's the same kind of issue I pointed out in my comment for Ransom Wilkes - everything is just too black and white. I think there's a much more interesting story here if some plot points are changed. What if there isn't a horrible punishment if you choose not to become a permanent werewolf, and Zizi is making that up to force new wolves onto his side? That would open up so many avenues to explore about how both sides of a conflict can manipulate people, and maybe open up some alternatives where Andy/Oliver gets to truly chose their own path, possibly outside of the two options initially presented to them. This story as it stands just doesn't feel all that interested in giving them that choice. 

Following up again on Oliver's initial killings, the VN seemingly barely puts any weight or consequence on them. There's a brief hint of a nod much later, but we cut straight from running away from a double homicide (even if there's an argument for self-defense) to a cutesy romance and a steamy sex scene. This is a jarring and abrupt tonal shift that doesn't fit the weight of just taking someone else's life, and this is repeated later when the story shifts straight from recovering from the protest massacre to the club orgy and Oliver's personal scene with Luis. 

This leads into one of my biggest issues with the narrative, which is that almost everything about how the protest is handled feels poorly thought out and, at times, frankly insulting. I genuinely cannot believe that this story, in the year of our Moon Spirit 2026, legitimately has the whole werewolf community be successfully called to action by the guy who just got there like two weeks ago giving a speech. Like... are we really expected to believe that no one thought those things before, that no one had said them, and that no one considered organizing? All of that on top of the fact that there was just a broadcast in which the government very transparently indicated that there would be a full werewolf genocide. Like, the logical result of attempting a peaceful protest in full view of people that openly want to slaughter you is everybody getting slaughtered. That's not a bold, courageous plan that Zizi and Luis should be proudly supporting, it's patently and pointlessly suicidal. I think it only remains as peaceful as it does (which is debatable since Zizi did kick the thing off with arson by setting fire to the market [the text implies that the whole hall is on fire, not just the flag]) for any length of time because the script is conflating real world protests that have an expectation of (at least nonlethal) safety with the universe this story actually takes place in.

Luis' ensuing emotional response therefore also feels contrived, as everyone who participated in the protest agreed to it, despite having more werewolf experience than Oliver, and Luis' subsequent almost immediate shift back to horny after Zizi's funeral feels equally contrived. Following the protest massacre, I was already having flashbacks to a certain other jam entry that severely mishandled a mass casualty event by making it more about characters' interpersonal drama and attraction rather than appreciating the severity of the event itself, and then this VN goes ahead and does its own mass shooting five minutes later. This scene almost feels like a direct response to said other VN, but I don't think it has the result it intended.

There is a very deep irony here in that "courageous hero kills the mass shooter" is a common right-wing fantasy that is depicted almost beat for beat here. Oliver, who has no training and no experience, is somehow the only one in a club full of werewolves that decides to fight back, and singlehandedly successfully intercepts and kills the shooter. This is exacerbated here since all the victims have superhuman physical abilities that should have been able to dispatch the aggressor almost immediately. The way the shooting itself focuses much more on shock value with the bloody scenes and killings themselves rather than reflecting on the actual lives lost and the weight of such a tragedy, combined with the whole hero thing honestly made this sequence feel (unintentionally, I must stress) tasteless to me. 

I also agree with the others below that the father was a massive wasted opportunity for thematic nuance. It seems like you were trying for a more nuanced approach than you gave Ransom (the two situations are pretty similar though...) but the ending made all the buildup feel like it was for nothing. Also, to Gatr's point below, I struggle with how Randy's condition even works canonically since he should have been transforming at night, and, if the implication is that Randy killed his wife during his first transformation (which would give him a very interesting perspective on the wolf thing that's never really dissected), that would make him a very late bloomer based on what we know about the process.

There are other minor points I could bring up, like the difficulty of having a conversation on a motorcycle or Oliver being shocked Luis was gay after having the conversation about all types of sex being acceptable with Zizi and Luis (and Luis specifically bringing up gay sex tips), but I think I've gone on for far too long already, so I'll wrap this up.

Creativity:

The vision is there, especially in the style this project is drenched in (maybe more towards the beginning than the end), and I have to give credit for that accordingly. With that said, I think the execution of that vision just requires more focus, intent, and handling mature themes with the requisite maturity they warrant. 

Look, I know there was a lot of feedback above (you want to do a long entry, I'm gonna do a long yap), and a lot of it was critical, but I really think if you got more of a handle on these scope, tone, and nuance issues that you'd be able to create something truly spectacular, and I absolutely want that for you.

Alright, the pitch is pretty straight forward here: very standard fantasy RPG story with a hefty video game influence (we even start out with a gimmicky stealth section before we get our starting gear) but the characters are all GAY???

I'll be honest, this kinda thing isn't really my jam. If I want an RPG experience, I'd rather just, like, play an RPG, and this premise is reminiscent of the kinds of anime I generally tend to avoid. That said, there is clearly an audience for this based on the other comments, and I do want to clarify that I at least had a good time - this wasn't at all a struggle to get through or anything. Keeping in mind that I'm outside the target audience, I have several thoughts though:

Implementation of Theme:

Maybe this is too technical (or nitpicky, realistically), but I'm not sure this actually nails the theme. While there's often a lot of overlap, high fantasy doesn't necessarily equal folklore, which specifically concerns legends and stories passed down through cultural tradition. While we have monsters and magic and stuff that certainly aren't real in our universe, they're presented as commonly accepted within the game's universe, even if they're infrequent. Like, even if this stuff is relatively rare and dangerous, the tainted stampedes aren't any more folklore than something like a hurricane is on Earth. Maybe the idea is that the characters will become folklore down the line due to their heroic exploits, but this isn't really coming through for me either. If there was something else you were going for, I missed it, but I think the theme was implemented more cleanly in other entries that I've read.  

Presentation:

Strongest category here by far, and man, you guys absolutely crushed it in this category. Yeah, sure, there are some things that probably had to be cut due to jam constraints, but I thought all the art here was superb, especially the CGs, which were explosively vivid (maybe even too intense at times - I feel like the sparring CG might have been too intense for just sparring, but we're clearly doing Rule of Cool here, and that's fine). The text was very well proofread, the various expressions on the sprites were well-deployed (mostly - there were a couple times when one sprite would look like it was facing the viewer and the other would be awkwardly staring at the middle of the screen), and the bear monster design was pretty cool.

One major knock that I did have for presentation - while the music was generally solid, there were a few times when the track that was playing seemed totally disconnected from the tone of the scene. It's not enough for me to take points off from this category, but I thought it was bizarre, especially with the attention to detail shown for the rest of the presentation, that while you have lines like "Seeing them soaking in a pool of their own blood, I felt bad for a moment" or "We were taking care of the fallen" the BGM is just like  :)

Story/Writing:

Similar to your May Wolf from last year, I have a lot of thoughts so I've prepared another numbered list here:

1) It's difficult to really judge this since this is, in effect, just a prologue, but I feel like there are some pretty important worldbuilding elements missing that could really shape the tone of the narrative and characters. Strategically, I don't really understand what the logic of keeping your healers locked up at home would be. Even if they can't use offensive magic (or aren't supposed to be able to, anyway), they can still very clearly be proficient with physical weapons, and even if that wasn't true, why wouldn't you want to have healers supporting the people that were proficient with weapons and offensive magic? That's like, the basic function of a medic.

If there is some sort of impetus for keeping healers locked up (and there might be based on some of Moon Blade's comments), it would be very helpful to know what those are because that greatly impacts the consequences of Frey's adventure. If locking up the healers is arbitrary, that makes the practice feel like a plot device that exists solely to incite the plot rather than have any function in the world, and if there is a good reason for keeping the healers in one place, it changes the whole dynamic of how we read Frey's actions if he's putting the whole country at risk or something by going off on his own. Same thing for Moon Blade - his sudden switch from machine operating on behalf of the government to party member has a much different connotation if that's also contributing to some greater risk for the institution he's sworn to protect. Further characterizing the impact of Frey's actions is also important because...

2) Right now Frey is kind of a Mary Sue. Frey is supposed to be a healer, which are ostensibly kept in monasteries because they can't defend themselves. However, Frey also easily dispatches lower level monsters, goes toe-to-toe with a guy that's so good at melee combat that he has his own super cool Naruto OC nickname, and then takes down a super hard monster that almost one-shotted said melee master (with an ability that Moon Blade is shocked he can even do because it's offensive magic, which goes against the like, one rule we've established for this magic system so far). Additionally, every choice Frey makes is the unambiguously morally correct one, and there are never any real consequences for his idealism. He helps the villagers even though that blows his cover and stays and fights the murder bear even though he has the opportunity to retreat, but that all that results in him recruiting Moon Blade instead of getting him or someone else killed or captured (for longer than like 5 minutes). Also his super mega ultra healing power on top of all the other stuff he's good at is magically curing incurable status effects via gay kissing, and everyone he magically kisses also becomes smitten with him to some degree.

This kinda goes back to the worldbuilding thing and the lack of an explanation why he's supposed to be cooped up in the first place - it feels like the world revolves around Frey rather than Frey existing in it. And like, if all you're here for is the power fantasy and building up to the inevitable smut, that's probably fine, but I struggle to get invested when it seems like there are limited opportunities for the main character to grow.

3) Let's touch on Frey's smoochy-smooch mechanic a bit more. When Moon Blade gets impaled by the murder bear, I think that was supposed to be a tense moment, but it really wasn't for me since a) we already established that Frey has magical kissing powers so of course he's going to use those on Moon Blade and he'll be fine, and b) the fact that Frey has magical kissing powers is already so ludicrous on its own that it kind of crumbles any tension generally. The latter isn't actually necessarily a bad thing though - if anything, I wish this story leaned more into the absurdity since that would set it further apart from being really similar to everything else in its genre and make it feel much more interesting, to me at least.

4) If you did want to keep things a bit more grounded, I think there are some scene edits you could make that would fix a lot in one go. Like, instead of having the murder bear stab Moon Blade from behind, have Moon Blade react to the mutation and realize he needs Frey's help. This makes Moon Blade look more like the experienced professional he's supposed to be rather than a cocky dumbass, gives the two an opportunity to work together to build their chemistry and trust, and can result in a less grievous injury that Frey can heal without the mouth-to-mouth and cuddling that the script jumped to a bit prematurely.

5) I don't think the shift in perspective to Korpa was a great idea. As it stands, we learn basically all the information from that exchange later anyway, and it probably would've been more impactful to learn "Chris'" (I will only refer to him as Moon Blade and you can't stop me) true role along with Frey since the dramatic irony doesn't build any real sense of foreboding or anything. It would be one thing if they traveled together for some time while we knew he was a traitor, but he reveals his identity within like an hour of meeting Frey anyway. It's also the only current switch in perspective away from Frey, so it's not a reoccurring concept, and you're also losing another possible twist for the audience of finding out about Korpa selling Frey out.

6) More minor point, but Frey's insistence that Moon Blade's skills call into question his story as a deserter seems totally based in video game logic, where soldiers would be minor NPCs, rather than  a defined, functioning world, where soldiers would likely be some of the best fighters, because that is their literal job, and one can desert for any number of reasons. You can be an amazing swordsman and be a fugitive because you got caught balls deep in a princess. There are some other lines that raised an eyebrow for me (like Frey stating Moon Blade wouldn't change overnight, even though he literally just did change from order-following tool of the crown to party member overnight), but the soldier thing stood out since Frey mentioned it several times and I didn't think it was that sound.

Creativity:

So, on the one hand, there's definitely an attempt here to create a fantasy world and add your own systems and intrigue to it, but on the other hand, as I and others have pointed out, the premise never really strays too far from genre norms. I'm not sure if this will be one that I come back to, since like I said this isn't really my thing, but everyone else seems to dig it so I hope you can keep building on this world and these characters when you pick the story back up again. Despite what the wall of text might suggest, I did still have fun with this, and that's the most important thing.

Final score of 5 steamy cancer-curing makeout sessions out of 4 tutorial NPCs.

Finally, a jam entry where I can put all those years of Catholic school to good use. I know the Prayer of Saint Francis when I see it lol. 

While I think the high concept is interesting and the effort was admirable, this one didn't really land for me though. Let's get into it:

Implementation of Theme:

Yeah, requirement met for sure, and this is probably the most interesting part of the project for me. I think there's an instinct to link "folklore" to high fantasy, cryptids, or pre-Christian cultural traditions, as seen through many other entries, but hagiography is just as much folklore as those other subjects, and choosing such a unique angle was inspired (divinely? maybe not). I don't really have any other notes for this section. Well done here.

Presentation/Writing:

Alright, let's start with the good: I thought the music was pretty spot on throughout, the UI was fitting, the expressions on the stock sprite assets were used effectively, and the text was very well proofread, with only a couple noticeable errors in the script. 

You definitely went outside the "typical" VN box with the formatting here, but I'm not sure this worked for me, personally. While framing the whole VN in NVL mode is distinct, I also think it disrupts the "visual" component ot the visual novel, with the sprites, as few as they are, often obscured by walls of text. The breaks in the text to show the wolf's shifting emotions were welcome, but in a more "traditional" style, you wouldn't need the breaks since those transitions could happen in "real time" and the reader could keep seeing the current emotion without having to hide the interface. With the number of direct quotes in the game taken from the source material, part of me wonders whether the decision to put the whole game in NVL was entirely aesthetic or was more of a necessity to display such long blocks of text.

I agree with some of the points below about relying on text colors to differentiate speakers - aside from some colors being too similar, like the orange for the guard and red for the Holy Man, the lack of actual names for any of the characters can make who's speaking hard to distinguish as well. Since basically every character is referred to as "he", if you get your wires crossed on which color refers to whom, it's easy to get lost. 

While I understand that the writing style was deliberately crafted to reflect the source material, I think there are still places where you could have made edits to favor readability over strict imitation, as the verbose, winding language can get a bit tedious. I'm not saying you have to drop the bit and put the whole thing in 21st century vernacular, but I don't think you'd be breaking the immersion if you edited phrases like "He let out a soft chuckle" to "He softly chuckled." Also, not sure if this is a regional punctuation thing or something, but it's generally helpful to have spaces between words and dashes to make sure the reader knows that's supposed to be a pause and not a hyphenated word, and there were no such spaces in the text here.

Last note on presentation - I'm not entirely sure what the point of including the Italian audio at the end was, other than just because you could. Especially with how short that sequence is, I don't know what we're getting out of the voiceover that the text couldn't already communicate. 

Story/Creativity:

While the high concept is interesting, as noted above, I find it a bit hard to give full points for creativity when the best lines in the VN are ripped straight from existing media. While there are some superficial changes tacked on, and I'll get to how these are probably underutilized in a second, as others have pointed out, the plot more or less follows the story of the Wolf of Gubbio exactly, and even the vision of the town's betrayal of the wolf and the wolf's subsequent disillusionment is lifted straight from "Los Motivos del Lobo". If anything, this VN feels like a piano recital to me - there's an emphasis on imitating an existing style that's very technically proficient, but at the end of the day, this is basically just playing a cover.

To be clear, there's nothing wrong with adaptation, but the best adaptations focus on taking the concept in a different direction, or at least adding a different spin on the original. We get traces of this throughout the VN, but none of these ideas are ever developed or expanded in meaningful directions. We get a line from the wolf mentioning aspects of his culture, but the Holy Man doesn't follow up on this at all. Like, we know he's surprised by the existence of an anthro wolf from their first interaction, and now he's hearing that there's an entire culture of these beings and that has no impact whatsoever? What if the wolves are a threat? What if they could be allies? What if that's a whole other group he could be evangelizing? 

Same thing with the gay temptation subplot that's hinted at a couple times and then pretty much summarily dealt with over about a paragraph. What if Francis really was tempted? What if he succumbed? How does that affect him, and how does it affect the wolf, especially after the town that Francis convinced him to join turned its back on him?

There are some interesting ways you could incorporate this, too. Right now, the frame story doesn't add much, and as is, could probably be cut entirely with a few other edits, but what if we see glimpses from Francis' perspective that he's not telling the whole truth? Like maybe he's telling the younger monks about how he resisted the wolf's desires, but we get other hints from the story itself, like inconsistencies that the monks wouldn't question but the reader would, that he did not?

Again, what's here isn't bad, I just really would have liked to see this concept pushed further than it was.

Final score of 12 instruments of peace out of 4 stigmata. 

It's kind of wild to me that those aspects weren't intended since they came through so clearly to me, but I apologize for misreading your story (yeah, I know the argument that the text speaks for itself regardless of authorial intent, but I still feel bad when I'm way off the mark from what was intended). I think some of my comments about nuance regarding perception of the "other" still apply, but I love all the additional insight! Also, I wasn't aware of Damarchus at all, so it's definitely been enlightening being educated through this jam on aspects of folklore I'm clearly lacking in.  

Alright, so, I read a different May Wolf entry a few days ago that involved a guy currently in a relationship with a girl that experiences some gay temptation, and I was pleasantly surprised when that story ended with the guy choosing the girl instead of the hot gay wolf guy since the latter seems like kind of the default M(a)y Wolf ending. 

There are no such surprises here, and this story ended exactly where I thought it would. There are interesting details and bits of worldbuilding along the way, but you basically know what you're getting into just looking at the cover on this one. 

"One Last Week" was my personal #1 from last year's May Wolf, and while this one is just a teensy bit more self-indulgent than the other stuff I've read from you, this was still a solid entry. I have thoughts though.

Implementation of Theme:

Yeah, we're certainly covered here. If anything, we might be overly covered here. I think this met the mark already just from werewolves and their relation to Ezath, but then we get even more on top of that with some local legends like one of Mitch's apparent favorites, Damartos, who started feeding the wolves, then hung out with them until he became one. Subtle.

As alluded to, I'm not sure you really needed the extras there, and I wonder why it's there at all unless you thought that werewolves might have been too accepted in-universe to be considered "folklore" and wanted to be doubly sure you met the theme. It's not like you need any additional foreshadowing here; the guy's cuddling a werewolf in the icon. I don't think any of this takes away from the implementation of the theme, and I'm still giving full marks for this category, but I did think that was curious.

Presentation:

I thought the presentation was pretty great here. I was a bit worried at the beginning with the one static background, the one set of character sprites, and the one looping music track, but the visuals, and to a lesser extent, audio, open up as the story progresses. The art style had a storybook-esque vibe that fit well with the setting, and while the music could have been more varied, it was understated enough that it didn't bother me at all. I think there was also a page turning sound effect for changing scenes? I could have been hallucinating that, but if that was there, that's a neat touch. 

For a one-man show, the amount of sprites, variations, and CGs was really impressive, and I thought they were high quality, even if humans are absolutely not what I'm here for and I do not and will never understand beards on anthros. 

Writing was meticulously proofread as well, with maybe only one or two errors that I caught through the whole VN. Really great work on the polish here.

Story/Writing:

Generally, I thought the plot and prose here were pretty solid, but in the interest of keeping this to a semi-reasonable length, I'm going to jump into a few critiques:

- There's a pretty clear thematic parallel of lycanthropy being analogous to homosexuality, and while this is superficially fine (if a little heavy handed), I'm not sure if the circumstances that led to werewolves being regarded as "against nature" totally work for this analogy. Like, when that kind of language is used for homosexuality, it's a false justification for discrimination that focuses on "otherness" because there's no actual harm to point to, but in this universe, there was a very real war in Ezarth, that (allegedly) involved very real werewolves, that inflicted very real casualties, that caused the survivors to have very real PTSD. It's intentionally vague how much the soldiers encountered werewolves in Ezarth (Thalis' account of his platoon's eradication doesn't account for any prior engagements, any subsequent reassignments to another unit, or the experiences of any other veterans, since he isn't the only one from the village) but the "othering" of werewolves is a bit more complicated if your only exposure to them has been seeing one rip your friend's face off. 

I think you try to get into this a little, but there are other points as well, like Mitch lamenting destroying his father's figures because Thalis told him to, that could've used a bit more nuance (yes, it's absolutely tragic that the mementos of Mitch's father are lost, but maybe keeping a bunch of severe PTSD triggers around the house isn't a great idea either. There are probably compromises that could have been taken here, like just hiding the figures.). I feel like I'm not doing a great job of explaining this, but the general point here is just that there could have been more nuance in exploring how legitimate trauma shaped the attitudes of the village in addition to any preconceived notions or misconceptions.

- While I applaud the decision to have Mitch and Abel stay in the village to try to make things work instead of abandoning Birdie and the others, I feel like there's still a bit of hand-waving on this issue so we can hurry up and get to the happy ending. We get the line "But those things will come in due time" but, like, will they? Things seemed pretty dire just with the dowry issue, let alone blowing up the whole engagement. I understand said happy ending, but I'm not sure I'm as optimistic as the leads.

- I typically like seeing branching paths and player input, and the effort is always appreciated, but from the differences in length and content of the two endings I felt like the choice was less about caution vs. trust, or pragmatism vs. optimism, as it was characterized by the options, and more just about whether you got the Big Gay Sex Scene or not.

- Fuze already pointed out the anachronisms that I noted, so I won't reiterate those, but there were some awkwardly verbose lines of dialogue here too. For example, when Mitch first encounters Abel, he has the lines "I suppose so, but it's not like your techniques are all that efficient either!" "I mean, what do you stand to benefit from stacking the wheat up into such a massive pile?" I kind of struggle imagining an actual person saying that, and these could be condensed down to something like "You're over there building a tower of wheat and you're calling ME inefficient?" I know jam constraints don't leave a lot of time for drafting and revising, but just a stylistic thing to consider.

Creativity:

On the positive side for creativity, I think there was a lot of effort here in the attempts at detailed worldbuilding as well as the general aesthetic direction for the project, and overall I'd consider this a highly creative product. With that said, 

1) Thematically, "supernatural mutation is a parallel to being gay or otherwise othered" was novel and original when X-Men was doing it 50 years ago, but I feel like this is something I've seen quite a few times at this point, and

2) let's be honest here, man. There were plenty of points in this story where you probably could've cut out the middleman and just named the protagonist "chmron" instead of "Michail". I'm not sure how far outside the box you had to go to come up with the core plot here.

I know there was a lot of feedback above, but I really do think you did an excellent job with this, so please don't take any of that the wrong way.

Final score of 12 bottles of Old Spice Wolfthorn body wash out of 3 uncomfortably realistic lupine fursuits.

This is one of those really awkward ones to evaluate where, even though there are going to be a few critiques below, I assure you had a fantastic time with this. It's not exactly the most revolutionary story, but it's heartfelt and fun and there should always be a place for that. 

Without further ado, I'm going to get into the breakdown.

Implementation of Theme:

Well, the intent is fairly clear here with the cast being a trio of ghost hunters investigating instances of folklore for their YouTube channel. However, I have to agree with some of the other commenters below that, while the box is ticked, it feels like the folklore element is there just to tick the box. We never encounter any of the folklore itself outside of Lilah's nightmare(ish) sequence (and maybe the museum if you want to count that), it has no real bearing on the core conflict about coming out to your friends, and as others have said, the YouTube channel could have been about reviewing restaurants or tourist traps or pretty much anything else and nothing would materially change in the narrative. The theme is there, but I think there are other entries that integrated it much more cleanly.

Presentation/Writing:

Conversely, these were the two strongest areas of the VN and I thought they were both really impressive. The sort of bombastically cartoony art style is cute and unique and I love it, and the sprinkling of CGs we get are great as well. The quick cuts to images like Lilah staring at the drooling Valentina in bed and all the monsters gathered in Lilah's dream got a big reaction out of me and really contributed to the story's vibe. The sprites were also vibrant and expressive, and I really appreciated that even the pronghorn museum attendant got a sprite with multiple expressions for all like four lines he had. 

Music was all fitting and well-deployed too, though I did notice that it felt weirdly loud. Even after adjusting the volume on the main menu, I had to go back and turn it down further in the settings. Not a huge deal, but I'm not sure what was going on there either.

While the plot itself may have been a bit basic, I thought the conversational, loose writing style really elevated the VN and made this a breeze to read through. The characters aren't the deepest or most fleshed out, but we still get some great glimpses of personality through their dialogue. Practically no proofreading errors here either, which is always great to see in a jam (though I do feel obligated to point out that "mortified" means "embarrassed" not "scared"). 

Story/Creativity:

So, in the comment section for another May Wolf entry, a commenter pointed out that the "gay panic" trope (e.g., "I like friend, but friend is same gender as me! Oh no, what do I do?")  was getting a bit tired, at least without another hook to supplement it, and yeah, I tend to agree. It's not that those stories can't be extremely personal or emotionally significant, because coming out, especially in certain regions or cultures, is a huge step, and I don't want to diminish that. However, in both that story and this one I couldn't help but think that I'd seen this movie before, so to speak. This one's at least a little different from the typical May Wolf entry because it's about girls (love to see the Ls as much as the Gs, the Bs, and the Ts, but they unfortunately tend to be underrepresented), but the main themes are essentially the same. Ultimately, I feel like pretty much every part of this story feels predictable - the horror-to-non-horror fakeouts, the central conflict, and the resolution to that conflict being that the love interest felt exactly the same all along. Like I said at the top, there's nothing wrong with this, it just feels really familiar at this point.

As much as the writing carries the project, I feel like there are still a few gaps in the characters, like, as others mentioned, what this group was like before the channel so we can see why the leads fell for each other in the first place, especially since, while having flaws in your characters is unequivocally a good thing, the characters did feel very flawed at times (I feel like you shouldn't need to be pushed that hard to delete a video you took of someone without their consent, Valentina. Also they had a pretty... cavalier attitude towards making shit up about historical figures, which feels kinda gross given the current ubiquity of misinformation on the internet). 

I also find it somewhat ironic that, despite Lilah's constant insecurity about becoming a third wheel and finally feeling like she might not be one after embracing Valentina, the story basically makes Trent the third wheel. His personality is the least developed out of the three, he's absent from the climax (understandably), and after the two girls presumably get together he'll be a literal third wheel traveling with a couple if they continue to do the YouTube thing. Obviously you can't cover every character angle, especially in a story this short, but I did feel a bit bad for the guy.

Like I said at the start, please don't be discouraged by the critiques - I really enjoyed this one and think you and passiv_boi are really onto something with your writing and production style. Looking forward to seeing what else you can come up with if you stick with it (and I hope you do! This shit is cute AF).

Final score of 10 perfectly toasted s'mores out of 7 uninstalled copies of Phasmophobia. 

Alright, I'm going to be a bit more critical than most of the other reviews here, but before I get into it I just want to make clear that while this entry didn't really land for me, it's nothing personal and getting any completed jam submission, especially your first, is a huge accomplishment that you should be proud of. With that said, I'm going to go ahead and break it down.

Implementation of Theme:

Yeah, it's there, and you definitely attempt to call attention to it by specifically referencing the word "folklore" several times in the script. My only issue here is that while yes, there is in-universe folklore about Rook and maybe some of the other monsters and phenomena in the game universe, on a meta level that "folklore" was only created by Alden to be a thinly veiled metaphor for the MC's absence from the group. I'm good with artificial folklore, including within the scope of a game universe, but this feels less integral to the universe and more just like a plot device, both in the party's campaign and in the VN itself. I think it still counts, so I'm giving you credit for it, but I think the theme was more deftly handled in some of the other entries I've read so far.

The line "[A story] becomes dangerous when people remember only the frightening parts" goes pretty hard though.

Writing:

Alright, let me preface this section by stating that I'm not accusing you of anything, I'm just making an observation and recounting my reaction when reading the VN. When I read the sentence "The house smells like rain on wool, old paper, and something cinnamon-sweet cooling in the kitchen." my heart sank a bit because that structure (e.g., smells like [x], [y], and something [z]), especially with the fixation on scent where it doesn't really need to be there, is something I've seen very often in AI-generated prose. The negation structure that Pink pointed out in their comment (e.g., Not [x]. Not [y]. Just [z]) is similarly common, as is a general over-reliance on metaphor. I'm giving the benefit of the doubt here, but I'm also flagging this as something to watch out for as you refine your style.

With that said, as others like Pink and Cardigan mentioned, AI scares notwithstanding, excessive similes/metaphors and repeated syntax is something you want to avoid since it can get pretty tedious to read. Figures of speech and unique syntax can be very effective, but the more often you use them, the faster the effect wears off. It's not only okay, but advisable to space out those flourishes to let the imagery they convey breathe.

Presentation:

Presentation here was pretty solid for the most part. There's no penalty for using the stock assets (that's what they're there for) and I think expressions were handled to the best you could expect using said stock assets. I think the UI and menus also fit the vibe of the VN, and the music generally worked, though I wish there were some sound effects or more variety of tracks within individual scenes. Tracks can continue uninterrupted for sometimes like two full chapters at a time, which can get a bit repetitive.

I think the MC for this story also definitely needs to have a name, even if you have the player enter their own to keep the "blank slate" idea. More than anything else, you need a way to distinguish when the MC is speaking as opposed to just narrating since both cases look exactly the same in the text box. Especially if a reader is rapidly clicking through, which they very likely could be due to the repeated staccato syntax, it can be easy to miss dialogue buried at the end of an internal monologue. 

There were very few proofreading errors, which is great to see, though, just from personal preference, at least for a jam entry I wouldn't mind exchanging some typos for freer flowing prose.

Story/Creativity:

So, I know you were, at least to some extent, going for vagueness in the plot and inciting events to allow for flexibility in your "blank slate" protagonist, but I question how effective this choice is. All the characters here are basically one-note: Bran/Caelan is the brawny and courageous one; Mira/Sable is the snarky (sometimes) and sneaky one; Nico/Quill is the cautious/quippy/nervous one; and Alden is the DM (I really can't think of any other distinguishing personality traits for him besides "nice" and "presumably likes the MC"). The MC themself has no traits, basically at all, other than having friends and not playing D&D for a while for an undisclosed reason (at least initially). 

I read another entry for this jam a few days ago that dealt with very similar themes, like growing disconnected from friends that you played a specific nerdy game with and the uncertainty and insecurity that comes from that. While I had plenty of issues with that story's focus and pacing, the characters were really fleshed out, with developed, unique personalities, and the game world they inhabited was similarly detailed. It felt like that game universe existed outside the immediate plot. The effect of all that was that the story felt real. The characters and their interactions felt real.

By contrast, this story just feels a bit generic to me. Sure, you can graft your own experiences onto the text, but the text should be helping out with at least some of the lift. As it is, I found it difficult to get invested in resolving a conflict that was mostly undefined with characters that were similarly mostly undefined. 

This might also be personal preference, and my own brand of social awkwardness not necessarily aligning with the creator's or the characters', but I'm not sure how I'd feel about my friend creating a whole campaign that revolved around asking me why I stopped hanging out with them. Like... I see what you're going for, but I feel like that would make me pretty unnerved and maybe a bit frustrated that they had to set up a whole event instead of just asking directly. Again, maybe a personal thing there.

Overall, I think there are some really interesting ideas here, but I think they need to be expanded on and filled out to really stick. It's not a bad first effort at all though, and clearly many readers were more receptive than me, so regardless of any feedback you receive I hope you stick with it and keep writing. 

Final score of 2 bags of Flamin' Hot Cheetos out of 24 cans of Mountain Dew Code Red.

Alright, I gotta level with you man. All this stuff about how gross combining energy drinks and tea is? I simply have to disagree. There's a reason Monster literally makes those themselves, and green tea Monster slaps.

Getting back on track, there's a lot of inspired creative direction here, but I feel like this VN doesn't always follow through on its ideas as much as it could, which leaves it feeling a bit undercooked in places. Getting into it by rating criteria: 

Implementation of Theme:

I think there's certainly an attempt with the reference to the deer legend about swallowing half a peach pit to symbolize a lasting bond with someone else (a legend that may have been invented for this story, as a cursory search didn't turn up anything like this for the real world). While the folklore is tied into the narrative, like other parts of the game it doesn't feel very fleshed out. At the end, the monster doesn't even take the pit, so I'm not sure what the resolution was even supposed to be. Was just relinquishing the pit enough? If so, why? Was it just that the monster didn't like that Bird clung to the memory despite his reaction to the deer ending things? I don't know, it seems a bit muddy on what exactly the peach pit was supposed to represent.

Presentation:

Visually, this was awesome. The art was on the simplistic and cartoony side, but this created a unique visual style that I think really worked. If anything, it was a little reminiscent of Night in the Woods, but in terms of the fairly simple animal characters as well as some plot elements (e.g., protagonist returns home to old friends after trying to get away from their dead end small town). The animations and other bits of flair like inset images really go above and beyond, and it's impressive all this was done under jam constraints. The VN was well proofread as well, with very few noticeable typos or grammatical errors. 

Where this VN was lacking in presentation, however, was sound. I'm not sure where exactly the issue was, because from the script file it looks like there was supposed to be music tracks playing at various points, but for much of the VN I only heard some very quiet ambient fuzz. It was actually driving me crazy for a bit - I thought I had to be missing something so I tried speakers and headphones to try to pick up more sound, but there didn't seem to be much there, even though SFX like the gas station door bell worked fine. 

This is an issue because there are several moments that really could've used audio to help sell the scene. In addition to generating tension or setting the mood, quick audio cuts are very useful in conveying the smash cuts to different scenes that you attempt a few times in this project. 

Story/Writing:

As mentioned at the top, there are a lot of interesting angles this story takes, but few of them ever seem to go anywhere. Martin is a genuinely caring person, despite his reputation, but he barely gets a line after this is made clear in his conversation with Bird about the cop. Harper's gender struggles are presented with honestly really refreshing frankness in the second scene in Bird's bedroom, but this is basically entirely dropped except for a token mention of Bird's mom unintentionally misgendering them. 

The core conflict with the monster feels equally underdeveloped, as well as awkwardly paced and concluded. I understand that with any sort of supernatural horror you don't necessarily want to give too much away about the monster since that risks diminishing the fear or mystique, but there needs to be enough for the reader to understand the motivations and stakes. Like, okay, maybe the monster is a metaphor for how the deer was envisioned by his homophobic father, and we don't really need to know how his metamorphosis into the antler beast happened, but why is it attacking Bird's friends and associates? If it's to make Bird miserable as a punishment for calling the deer a coward, why is it hiding the victims in the antler wicker men things in the forest instead of displaying them for Bird? Why are they being placed in the effigies at all? Does the monster not intend to kill? How concerned do we need to be for anyone's safety? Why is it attacking other people at all if it's just going to smash through Bird's window and try to attack him there anyway?

Focusing on the pacing, it seems like we've barely spent enough time with the characters to settle in before that home invasion happens. It feels like we're hitting the climax while we're still in the first act. Maybe moving some scenes around like giving more of Bird's background before we're already mid-chase sequence would help the pacing - by having this be a conversation with Harper, you could maybe provide more insight into them as well to further flesh out both of the most important characters. 

At the end of the story, we have Bird expressing that he wants to live, a marked departure from how he felt at the beginning, but I'm not sure what exactly is supposed to have prompted the change. Is it letting go of the sour memories about deer and the other town? Is it no longer being afraid of the monster? I don't even know if these things apply since the end comes so suddenly and we know so little about the monster that I don't know if anyone is actually safe or not (though it seems like the implication is that they are). We're also left with a lot of unanswered questions about the rest of the cast, like where is Martin in all of this? Where is Sam, or the cop dad? Other people were affected by this situation, and it's great that Bird wants to keep living, but there are a lot more pieces to pick up here that the story seems to kinda forget about. 

Creativity:

Despite some of the critiques above, I want to reiterate that this was still a wildly entertaining ride. There are parts that could have been reorganized or fleshed out, but it's hard to fault the creativity here, especially when it comes to visual direction. I liked this a lot, I just wish there was a bit more character work to really dig into. Still a great effort though, to be sure.

Final score of 3 loose cannon cops that play by their own rules out of 10 peach tea Monster Rehab cans. 

Rosso taking until this long in his life to conjure a big fluffy wolf best friend is a level of patience I don't think I could ever attain. 

Really though, this was cute, cozy, and pretty effective for its relatively short duration. I'll get more into it below, but I had a good time with this one.

Implementation of Theme:

Reading a couple of the comments below, I see that the "folklore" element may have been a reference to Little Red Riding Hood. While that makes sense now (besides Bonet having consumed the grandmother in an attempt to take her place so to speak, Rosso is literally wearing a red cape and is also literally named Rosso) I did not get that while reading and was struggling to find the connection. I'm giving you full points for folklore here, but I also felt the need to convey that I was kinda dumb I guess. Moving on.

Presentation:

The art and music are absolutely spot-on here, and I got a feeling the latter would be as soon as the gratuitous sax hit on the main menu. The sprites are outstanding - cute and expressive, including for characters that barely even appear. Giulia and Russo's mom are crazy good for characters that only appear in one scene each. Some of the storybook-style CGs were exceptional too - the whole ending pie-making sequence was fantastic. Only minor issue regarding the visuals is that some of the filters on the backgrounds might have made them look a bit more eerie than intended. The grayscale cabin exterior definitely comes to mind - that almost looked like something more fitting for a horror story than a lighthearted tale about baking pastries. 

The weak point in presentation is the numerous proofreading errors, but writing a coherent story in a second language is already really difficult, much less polishing it to make it shiny. There were a few lines I didn't follow, but I didn't have any trouble getting the overall story or tone. Especially for a first attempt, this was gorgeous work.

Story/Writing:

The plot here is pretty straightforward, but thematically this is an interesting look into grief as well as generational trauma (in this case living up to the expectations of your elders). We have a juxtaposition of Russo's mother, who handles both of these things in an unhealthy way (taking her anger out on Russo, losing her connection with her own mother after attempting to kill Russo), and Russo, who struggles initially and even falls into some of the same patterns (like taking his anger out on Bonet), but grows to come to terms with his grandmother's death in a healthy and stable way.

This is all generally pretty effective, though I did have a few critiques:

- The exchange between Rovere and Russo relies on parallels that are maybe a bit too direct. I get that we're going for a fairy tale aesthetic, so maybe that's why the "moral" is so blunt, but having Rovere's experience with losing his wife mirror Russo's experience with his grandmother almost exactly feels a bit convenient and simplistic and I feel like there are other ways you could've gotten to Russo having his realization and catharsis.

- Maybe personal taste, but I felt like Russo's mother was depicted as almost cartoonishly evil ("Your guardian would be the bottom of a cliff if not for her" - Jesus Christ, man) and maybe a little more nuance could have generated a more interesting conflict between her and Russo. Like, instead of the mother just being an irreparably reprehensible attempted child murderer, maybe she's still resentful of Russo, but for more sympathetic reasons that show the two characters are grieving from a similar place but handling it in very different ways.

- Evil dialogue aside, I feel like the mother did kinda have a point about being mad regarding the sacrifice of the last remnants of the grandmother to create Bonet. This is sort of addressed with Russo's angsty breakdown following the initial lemon pie attempts, but then it's more or less waved off by Rovere, who says that memories can exist without a physical representation. While this is true, that also limits the grandmother's legacy to the living memory of Russo, and maybe to a greater extent, Bonet, whereas the grandmother's cookbooks and other writings could continue to exist even after Russo, Rovere, and everyone else in the story was also gone. There are also pieces of worldbuilding that we don't know that could provide additional context for this (e.g., how permanent is Bonet? Since Bonet has all the memories of the cookbooks, could he just recreate them?). I'm not necessarily saying that this story needed to spend time on said worldbuilding, since that might have been too tangential and disrupted the narrative, but I do think that this moral quandary is maybe more complex than the story makes it out to be.

- The story also ended fairly abruptly on kind of a weird line. Giulia being happy the pie will be there soon is a seemingly insignificant note to end on. Maybe Russo looking forward to running the bakery with Bonet, or Russo being glad that Bonet exists, or something like that would have been a better coda.

Creativity:

Tons of creativity on this one, from the high concept all the way down to the details. As expressed above, some things didn't necessarily mesh all the way for me, but I can't fault the effort here at all. This was a really excellent showing that's stuffed with originality, passion, effort, and lemon filling.

I really do wish I could've tried that lemon meringue pie. :(

Final score of 5 loaves of freshly baked banana bread out of 3 cookbooks that taste better than the recipes inside them.

also why is Rovere jorking it with his wooden hand that sounds painful as hell

Alright, so this is pretty clearly taking a step back from your normal jam fare (at least judging by last year's May Wolf and Novembuck) of gameplay-heavy concepts and deciding to focus your efforts on a more in-depth story in the form of a "traditional" VN. I think this is totally fine - while I always found your ideas wildly creative, it seemed like you also never really had the time to pull them off in time for the jam, so doing something a bit technically simpler isn't a bad idea.

With that said, what you had in mind was still apparently a bit too ambitious for the jam since this is only the prologue of the story, with the demo ending as soon as we get our first traces of what is presumably the primary conflict. The thing is, I think you could've actually gotten a lot further along in the story in this timeframe than you did if you just focused the script more. To that end, I'm going to skip around a bit here and first dive into:

Story:

So let's start by taking a look at our leads and recapping what we actually learn about them in each of the opening scenes.

1) When they meet as children, Jacob is brash, impulsive, and outgoing, while Roberto is cautious, reserved, and methodical. Despite their differences, they become fast friends.

2) When they're teenagers, we see that Jacob is brash and impulsive, while Roberto is cautious and reserved. Despite their differences, they're still friends. Also Roberto might be gay. (side note here, but the way Roberto reports on his feelings to his mom felt... weird? Like they're supposed to be teenagers here, and kids are familiar with crushes and "like liking" someone way earlier than that. This exchange probably would have been more effective if Roberto understood what that feeling was and directly brought it up to his mom in the context of "I think I might have feelings for another guy" - she can still be supportive there and it would feel more natural)

3) When they're on their first adventure, we see that Jacob is brash and impulsive and Roberto is cautious and reserved. Also Roberto is definitely gay and very horny.

Right now, the leads' personalities aren't very deep, and because they're not very deep, we're learning the same information about them every time we see them. Their personalities still being a bit nebulous is fine for an intro, but I really wonder here if we needed all the flashbacks to them as kids and teens. Instead, we could just jump into the story while they're already on their first adventure and convey their backstory and relationship through conversation. You could still have the "mom I think I'm gay" scene, but just do it after their excursion to the mausoleum. By being more efficient with your storytelling, you get to the central conflict (presumably figuring out what the notes are about and avoiding people who don't want the protagonists to do that) much faster and the story in turn can feel more engaging and less disjointed. 

I think the backstory scenes are reflective of a broader tendency to overexplain details. There was a particular line that really stood out to me when Jacob states verbatim: "We have done some of the basics of adventuring." Like, this just made me stop, pause, and really consider that we were essentially watching a tutorial mission. Having the initial excursion start low stakes is totally fine - but the focus of the sequence should be finding the mausoleum and its contents. We don't really need a lot of detail on chopping wood, pitching the tent, or cooking food. Even though the boar scene had some kineticism and intense music, I never actually felt any tension since (despite how super dangerous real life boars are) I didn't think for a second that anything bad was actually going to happen to the characters. Maybe this wouldn't have stood out as much if the story leading up to that point was paced better, and even could be useful for establishing how well the leads work together if we start at this general point in the timeline, but as is I don't think it adds much to the narrative.

Implementation of Theme:

Yeah, there's definitely something here, and we waste no time getting the folklore you've established out through the intro story. That folklore will presumably have an integral part in the narrative going forward (like through Adarna and Juan being gay for each other and showing the current protagonists that you can have a gay interracial relationship after all) so I think we're covered here. There are some things that didn't make total sense about the legend itself, but I'll hold those questions for now since they could be explained as part of the story going forward (skimming the script I did see there was an alternate version of the legend from the wolves' perspective, for example).

Presentation/Writing:

Starting with the good, I think the art looks really solid here. Ideally there would be more expressions for the sprites, but I understand that's difficult to pull of in a jam, especially when you're a one-wolf army. The CGs are well done though, and I think the sketchy style of the BGs/CGs used for the intro recounting of the legend suit the oral tradition vibe really well. There's also some creative sprite manipulation to convey movement - it's not the most ostentatious example, but I really like the detail of the birds lowering before they take off.

Writing here was mostly decent, though there were still some proofreading errors and awkward phrasing. Just to provide one example, Jacob "exhales complainingly" - maybe "sighs dramatically"? "groans and wipes his brow"? There are these moments here and there, but I think you've still dramatically improved in your clarity, at least since Afterparty. Your writing definitely continues to improve, but an editor would do wonders for you if you can snag one.

As a final note on the writing, I feel like this story might have been better served by switching the perspective to first person, from Roberto's point of view. For most of the story, we're only getting his internal thoughts anyway, so having him also be the narrator might make it easier to immediately recognize what's just a thought and what's actual dialogue without relying solely on the presence or absence of quotation marks. For the only current scene that's not from Roberto's perspective, you could just shift things around so Roberto and Jacob go see Tony together or something. 

Creativity:

There's definitely some creativity in the worldbuilding you've created for this universe, including its politics and legends, though unfortunately we only get a few glimpses into this in the current build. In the prologue, this mostly takes a backseat to the relationship tension between Roberto and Jacob, but I have to echo Gatr's sentiment below that the way this is currently handled isn't super interesting on its own. "Uh oh I like my friend but I don't know if he likes me back" just feels very basic for a May Wolf plot, and I spent much of this VN really hoping that there was going to be an A plot to provide more of a hook. We did get there, or at least somewhere close, but then the demo ended. 

So, ultimately, I think we have a good start, but I would definitely like to see where this goes with a little tuning up outside the jam pressure.

I'll rate this 4 conveniently placed waterfalls out of 15 rainbow feathers that were actually gay all along.

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).

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.

Alright, let's get something out of the way right off the jump - you are not a failure and neither is this project. Sure, you might not have finished everything that you wanted during the jam, but there's a lot to be proud of from what you did produce. The world is a better place for your and this VN's presence in it, and I will not hear otherwise. Cool? Cool.

Getting more into the meat of the VN, it's clear that this was a massive step up in ambition and scope from your Novembuck, which if I recall correctly was your first attempt, and really, despite some of your concerns, I think you handled it quite well. The story has good bones - this is a really creative and compelling narrative, it just needs polish.

Breaking it down further in-depth:

Implementation of Theme:

Yeah, I think we've covered the ask here, with the incorporation of the legend of Regen and the village/cult that spawned from him. There are definitely parts of that that could be expanded on or more fleshed out (not necessarily pertaining to Regen himself, but The Way and its conflict with other sects is definitely pretty sparse), but we have folklore designed for this universe that shapes the immediate setting for the narrative and provides the basis for the plot, with Engil setting his plan in motion to, at least in his mind, purge the corruption he sees as inherent to the village. 

Presentation/Writing:

I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the critiques for this section because I think you already know what the issues are. Lack of backgrounds, other images, and sounds once we get to the route split, proofreading errors on pretty much every line, some awkward and unclear phrasing, etc. I think a lot of this can be chalked up, as mentioned above, to jam constraints, but I  really can't emphasize enough how much just getting a decent editor on board would take this from good to phenomenal. 

On the brighter side for presentation, like the other aspects of the VN, what's there is really good! The soundscape in the first act feels inspired to me, not relying just on BGM but also incorporating some good ambient effects to sell the scenes. The art and UI look great as well - Solis and Lillia are both extremely huggable and Engil is extremely punchable. It looks like there's supposed to be another "Best Tail Wag" accolade given out for this jam and this entry has to be a frontrunner for that. 

Clearly there are some moments here that could really use some imagery to support the scene (I'm thinking about finding the chief for the first time, the chaos of Engil enacting his plan, or even just setting flowers down by Regen's tree or something) but I also understand that those assets don't make themselves. Until then we can make do with Solis blushing through his helmet.

Story/Creativity:

As mentioned, it's definitely an ambitious idea, but I kinda really loved what you had cooking here. There's a lot to uncover about the world and the characters we meet within it, and I was really impressed with how you divided the narrative so things only really make sense once you've played both Solis' and Lillia's routes. One of the downsides of this structure, however, is that the endings don't entirely make sense without the full context, there will be narratively unsatisfying gaps on whichever route you pick first. For example, I did Solis first, and was utterly confused when the epilogue discussed the village changing under Lillia's leadership, since at the time

1) I didn't know what exactly in the village needed to be changed, since Engil was really the only one painted as a villain in Solis' route, and

2) I had no idea what Lillia's role was supposed to be, as she doesn't appear at all in Solis' route. In fact, judging from the broken shop window and her total absence, I thought she was supposed to be dead (for what it's worth, I also thought Solis was supposed to have been killed in Lillia's route before the epilogue). 

Besides just the lack of context, the endings are definitely the weakest part of the narrative, and since that's mostly due to how rushed and incomplete they feel, I think they may have been victims of the jam timeline as well. There were several moments in each where I felt like I totally lost what was actually supposed to be happening, and, especially in Solis' route, it feels like we just cut to the epilogue without really resolving the immediate danger. It practically cuts mid-scene and then we get something along the lines of "oh and Solis rescued us but then Engil ran away, but we're good otherwise." Like much of the rest of the VN, I think those parts of the story just need more time to cook.

I'm not going to say much on the Engil route since I don't think I was actually supposed to see any of that in this release, but I will say that it did feel a bit messier and far more rushed (especially with Julius' moral shift) than the other two routes. 

There's some worldbuilding stuff that feels a little underbaked here, like I mentioned with The Way above, as well as Julius' abilities as a wonder, which come off a bit more explicitly like a plot device than you may have intended (like, I know that they are a plot device, but they're only triggered at the times when it's most convenient for the plot, if you follow what I'm saying). Otherwise though, this was a really creative piece; I can tell a lot of effort went into shaping the setting and the characters, and I really hope you keep working on this after the jam so you can complete your intended vision for the project (though I also hope that intended vision includes some closure on what happened to my boy Larry). 

Also, just another note here - I don't really condone violence in any form, but I will say that if you have the tremendous fortune to have an adorable chubby wolf wife and you have the utter gall to complain about it, you deserve everything that's coming to you.

Final score of 5 cute wooden figure puppet shows out of 1 secretly assembled praying mantis army.

So, several years ago I was looking into the origin of the surname "Ochoa" out of curiosity and discovered, quite interestingly, that it's derived from the Basque word for "wolf". I didn't think that factoid would ever be useful to me ever again until I saw our wolf for this entry was named "Otsoa." Hell of a way for that rabbit hole to come full circle.

Anyway, tangents to the side, for a first attempt, there's a lot to like here. There's also a lot to work on for next time, but browsing through the script, I think some of that may have also come down to not being able to fully realize your vision due to the time constraints of the jam.

Breaking down by rating criteria:

Implementation of Theme:

If it's there, it's not as clear as some other entries. What we're looking for here is "folklore", and I could see an argument for the Basque proverb "Eguna egunezkoarentzat eta gaua gauezkoarentzat" being the connection to folklore here. That proverb does provide a discrete thematic throughline for the VN, with our characters forced by nature into their environment despite their desires not to be confined to their predetermined spaces (and Angler at least successfully rebels against this at the end). I'm not sure if the proverb itself really constitutes folklore? I think that's plausible, considering it's at least oral tradition and all, but I'm also not sure if I'm stretching to give you credit. 

Presentation:

Judging by some of the notes in the script, this may be where the project suffers the most from the tight timelines of the jam. When the presentation is working, it really works - the opening scenes of the VN are really great. The soundscape early sets the tone with ambient music and more subtle water SFX, we have great visuals like the faint sun from under the water, the crystal cave, and that poor snail, and the writing comes off very clean and aesthetic.

However, once Angler starts communicating with Otsoa, the presentation falls off for much of the VN. There are very many proofreading errors (typos, grammar, misused words), and while this really isn't as much of a problem with the internal narration, especially the purple prose in the cave where the text reading as ethereal or cryptic can elevate the moment, the errors can make the dialogue hard to follow and get invested in. Also, for much of the VN, basically the entire length of Angler and Otsoa's interaction, we are more or less staring at a blue screen. I understand that we're underwater and that is literally what it looks like, but that's a long way for a visual novel to go without any visuals. 

The presentation does pick back up again from the viper fight through to the end, with tense sounds and some solid art, though I did notice there were quite a few comments referencing CGs that didn't exist, hence the theory that some stuff got cut for time. I know it's difficult when you're just starting out, but I think getting an editor, or at least a proofreader, on board could really help you out. 

Story/Writing:

For how long this VN is, there's really not much plot to dig into. Setting aside some of the mysteries that are presumably intentionally left unresolved, like what the extremely durable phones are, how they got to the ocean and the forest, and why the cave and lake disappeared soon after, most of the conversation between the two leads is primarily meditative and philosophical. We don't really get much more out of our characters than the superficial elements that contribute to the theme - both feel trapped and disillusioned by their environment and desire for something unattainable, even if it would kill them. It seem like Otsoa might have a more interesting backstory (whereas Angler's is almost entirely characterized by aimless drifting before finding the phone), but we really only get hints of this before the phone is destroyed.

Again, I think I see what you' might be going for here, with Angler and Otsoa being representative of concepts or emotions rather than expressly defined "characters," per se, but the problem with this approach is that we spend a lot of time with these two having basically a Philosophy 101 discussion, and that combined with the static visuals and sometimes stilted dialogue can make the middle of the VN feel like a bit of a slog to get through. 

As stated, everything picks up dramatically once the viper enters the picture, but from there we speed straight through to the climax and conclusion, barely getting any other interaction with Otsoa. I think if you were to revise this, I'd suggest putting more "events" in the story to break up the philosophy speak. You already do this a bit with the first viper fakeout and Otsoa's flight to the cave, but if we could have a few more of those events that add some tension, or some momentum, and let the story flesh out some more facets of the characters' attitudes and personalities, that would go a long way. Those events don't all have to be super dangerous or life-threatening, but maybe Otsoa hunts some easy prey, or Angler finds a cool underwater rock formation that they describe to Otsoa or something. 

Creativity:

For all the feedback above, this was definitely creative. Underwater phone conversation with the wolf is absolutely a direction I haven't seen taken before, and there are other unique choices too, like the characterization of the underwater environment as very cold, calculating, and isolated and the integration of Basque language and culture. 

There are some really cool ideas here (and, to reiterate, some really inspired images when they pop up), and I think now that you have some experience under your belt you can use this as a foundation to make something really special if you stick with it, and I hope you do.

Final score of 8 completely waterproof cell phones out of 12 Freshman philosophy lectures taught by a literal wolf.

Let me preface this by saying that I'm not really squarely in the intended audience for this one. This VN relies pretty heavily on MMO nostalgia, and I've never even played an MMO outside of a brief two-week excursion into Runescape in middle school, so a bunch of the references here were probably lost on me. 

That said, there are clearly other themes at play here like with general insecurity about being left out or forgotten that I absolutely can identify with, so I think there's plenty here for someone who isn't as experienced or invested in the specific brand of nostalgia you're going for. That's actually similar to part of why I do this whole dissection thing for every jam entry; I never want anyone to feel like their work is less valuable or valued than anyone else's (and yes, that's probably just a cope to excuse my yapping, but still).

Without further ado then, let's get into the meat of said big, long dissection thing:

Implementation of Theme:

Per Wikipedia: "Tu'er Shen is a Chinese deity who manages love and sex between men. ... He returns from the dead in the form of a leveret (a hare in its first year) in the dream of a village elder." So, yes, the box for "folklore" is absolutely checked. The one issue I have with the use of folklore in this entry is how it's actually weaved into the narrative, which is a bit superficial. Yes the Tu'er Shen deleted gay sidequest sets the backdrop for the final adventure, but it really is just a backdrop. Root and Hugo were already well on their way towards figuring out their situation (hence their hug accidentally triggering the quest), which was already causing tension with Mira. While there are a few musings throughout about censorship of homosexuality in 00s video games, I think the contention that the specific nature of the quest brought these three (especially Root and Hugo) together to be a bit weak. From what we see in the story, it feels like they could've taken any new arduous quest and reached largely the same result. 

Story:

I think some of the issues with the implementation of theme discussed above are part of a broader issue with this VN, which is that it can be a bit unfocused. Essentially we have two main conflicts here - the trio's friendship on shaky ground, and a lack of certainty regarding Root and Hugo's relationship, specifically. I'm not really sure how I feel about the resolution of either.

The Mira issue takes up much of the middle of the game (basically all of part 3, per the script), and while this is going on, everything else is pushed to the side. Everything about the Tu'er Shen quest becomes background noise, as does the secondary plot thread with Root and Hugo. There are some issues with this:

1) As alluded to, the whole thematic throughline about the gay sidequest drops out almost entirely here.

2) I understand that all of the characters are socially awkward +/- terminally online, but the conflict here seems like it could be solved with some really basic communication. Literally all Root has to do is tell Mira "Hey I'd love to catch up but I'm tired right now, can we chat this weekend" and all the problems would be solved, but while, again, I get that the characters don't like confrontation, some of the dancing around the issue by saying literally everything except what the core problem is seems to be dragging out the conflict to make it feel larger and more significant.

3) By giving your story a central conflict that feels like it could be solved in five minutes, you give yourself a bit of an issue. When Root and Mira actually talk it out, they do solve it in like five minutes, which, while pleasantly realistic, is a bit underwhelming compared to how long we spent building up this confrontation. 

4) Even then, I feel like Root got off very easy. He absolutely was being a dick and I found myself really disliking him. Even in the resolution with Mira he alludes to his apology being more about what she wants to hear than it being totally genuine, and I question how much he really learned from all that.

5) Because this conflict is way more significant than the other (the Mira issue has the risk of breaking up the friendship entirely, while the Root/Hugo issue failing would just mean they're both single a bit longer), it feels like the climax is occurring way too early in the story. Like, yes, there is still an issue to be resolved, but there's another 25% of the VN left where everybody is friends and getting along perfectly fine again and literally just completing an MMO sidequest. You can have that denouement,  but there's a reason why the "falling action" part is so much shorter than the "rising action" on a story arc diagram - once that climax is reached, the tension is gone.

Now, sure, there is still some possible tension about whether Root and Hugo that will get together, but to be honest, I barely felt that at all. Sure, there's some hesitation on Root's part in the first visit to the temple, but they're pretty explicitly flirty by the time of the dick plant so I never really felt like there was any tension about them getting together - the confession and decision following the final fight felt like more of a formality than anything. 

Getting refocused (maybe ironically) on the subject of focus, there is a lot of material that really could have been cut here. I'll get more into individual lines in the "writing" section, but broadly, we really don't need things like the whole 30 day dungeon delving bit (you don't need this to reinforce anyone's character - just have Mira open up with the secret sidequest. I promise you she's characterized as zany and easily distracted more than enough already) or the backstory for how they all met (there are ways you could possibly make this work, but as is, we get this 80% of the way through the story when all of these characters are extremely well defined and it doesn't add much). Focusing more on fleshing out the primary conflicts could help a lot with the pacing here. '

Two final points here:

1) Maybe this is my lack of experience with MMOs, but I really struggled with what actually was happening on screen. Sometimes it's specified that something is an emote or an interaction, but then we get stuff like blushing, or ears flattening, or noticing the look in someone's eye. Is this just happening in Root's head? Like I can't tell if the narration is trying to present Root's interpretation of events or if it's forgetting sometimes that this is all happening in a video game. Same thing for including verbal fillers in dialogue - why would you type that?

2) I'm not entirely sure what value we got out of setting this specifically in 2011. There's a couple Morenatsu references and one wink-at-the-camera political joke, but that's really it (though I did like the small detail you can catch about figuring out the year by noting all the characters are 25 and that Mira has "1986" in her username). You also might kinda unintentionally give yourself an anachronism here since presumably "chula" is a reference to Echo and (someone can correct me if I'm wrong here) I don't think that existed in any capacity until more like 2014-15.

Writing:

This may be a personal preference, but I would caution the deployment of fourth wall breaks. Like, for example, you have Root and Mira discussing their issues publicly instead of in a private chat, then you explain this with "Because fuck you, that's why." and then the crowd immediately disperses. This doesn't really add anything to the story, and I feel like you're stretching for a joke that doesn't really land. Similar kind of thing with "After all, one of the worst things you can do in a game was break the reader's immersion. So. Yeah. Don't do that." Yes, correct. Cut that line.

There were also some questionable choices made with some of Root's horny interjections, and I'd urge caution with these as well. Especially in a heavily dramatic scene, throwing in something like "And no, I can't even enjoy that mental image right now" just really sucks all the tension out. If the protagonist isn't taking this seriously, why should we?

There were some other weird tonal juxtapositions as well, like discussing Hugo getting disowned before immediately pivoting into jokes about his fanfic writing. Like, that's a pretty traumatic event and I'm not sure how I felt about that so quickly transitioning to comedy.

Presentation/Creativity:

Presentation here I thought was generally pretty good. There were a few moments where I wish we had another background or two (one for the hot springs would have been really useful, even if not much of the plot happens there), but I thought the sprites were great - very expressive with plenty of variations and there were some fun uses of kineticism too. Propeller Mira was a highlight. Music was pretty solid throughout, and the VN was mostly free from proofreading errors, which is always great to see. 

Two things to note here: sometimes the flashing arrow to indicate moving to the next line appears in the left center of the text box rather than at the end of the line, and when pausing there's an error that states "Couldn't find file 'gui/gmae_menu.png'".

Despite what it may look like from all the feedback above, I really did enjoy a lot of this. There were definitely spots where the execution could have been a bit smoother and the pacing could have been tighter, but it's clear you had a vision for the story you wanted to tell and I think a lot of that did come across here. Like I said at the top, it's nothing personal; I do this for everyone. 1,500 word essays on jam VNs are my love language, I guess. But I think it would be great to see what else this team can come up with.

Final score of 6 rare mounts out of 4 scrolls freshly pulled from a rabbit's ass.

Okay, let's check the notes for things to remember going into May Wolf '26... Ah yes, here we are, "QUINTUPLE CHECK TO MAKE SURE YOU AREN'T MISREADING JOE'S ENTRY." While this is especially curious timing considering It Could Be was apparently updated like four hours ago, I think I have enough of a handle on this one to do my thing.

And do my thing I shall! Let's get into it.

Implementation of Theme:

Sure, we have a local legend about a villa that provides the central narrative and thematic throughlines for the piece. If there's any connection to real folklore, I don't get it (though I didn't look very hard either), so operating under the assumption that the legend was invented for this story, both the superstition and the misconceptions that created it feel plausible, grounded, and well-connected to the story and characters. Definitely good on this area.

Presentation:

Man, there's a lot I really liked in terms of presentation here. I adored the art in this, both the sprites and the more impressionist CGs that really convey the dreamy aesthetic of the flashbacks. I love the contrast between the bright colors in the flashbacks with the muted palette of everything occurring within the villa as well. Sprites all had multiple expressions that were used effectively, and there was one curious effect where Raimondo's text box sprite was flickering between "current" and "past" versions as Federico grappled with how to handle that relationship. 

Regarding possible issues with the visuals, there were a few occasions where text box sprites didn't appear when it seemed like they should have. Some of the backgrounds felt a little superfluous, especially for rooms we didn't revisit or spend much time in, and the saturation and lighting on some of the backgrounds left me a bit confused early on as to what the tone was supposed to be. Some of the rooms and art pieces came off distinctly eerie, but there wasn't really a horror component to this. 

I think audio could have really helped clarify the tone in certain scenes, but it was conspicuously absent for much of the VN. This is a bit disappointing considering the soundscape at the beginning was actually great - having just the crickets at first, followed by the introduction of fitting BGM worked really well, and I wish we got more of this, though I understand that sometimes things happen due to jam constraints. 

I wonder if some visuals may have been planned but were also cut for the jam - I think this VN really needed a better image of Giuditta's portrait considering how significant it is to the story. There's an image that serves as a stand-in for it, but I think we need the full picture (literally) for everything to land. Besides capturing Giuditta's emotions, which are clearly very important, it can also just clarify the appearances of the historical characters (I point this out as on first reading I thought the husband was the fox, so I was very confused by the revelation following the locket breaking).

I like the multiple perspective narration, though I found the first transition a bit jarring and had to rewind to make sure I followed correctly. There are clear choices that are made to distinguish the narration like the color of the text box boundary and the switch between second and first person, but you only learn the significance of these a few lines into Federico's narration. Maybe if you could have started Federico's first narration with a direct interaction with Anna or something that would've been clearer.

Last point here, when Federico states his wish in the center of the screen, the text box looks a little awkward hanging out empty in the corner, and I think it probably should have been removed for that moment.

Story:

"Be careful what you wish for." Not exactly the world's most exotic theme but the grounded, personal approach this VN takes for that makes it work. We have a legend where people consider a historical figure good luck and wish upon her memory for love and prosperity, only to find that she only really got one of those things. She got the respect she longed for, but it came at the expense of her happiness. The villa then becomes something of a gilded prison, and I think it's important to note that Federico wanted to spend the night in the villa just like Giuditta did then, and he absolutely did - decidedly unhappy. 

It's intentionally ambiguous to what extent anything supernatural is actually happening, but I think there's some indication that Giuditta is pushing Anna and Federico out of the villa, trying to give them that happiness she could never have with the fox guy. The wolf sculptures help sell this too, with the one that reminds Federico of Raimondo notably facing away from the other two. 

Where I think this story is particularly interesting is how Raimondo is handled. We're never given what his wish was, but we are told that this excursion was his idea, and he does seem awfully eager to jump to the conclusion (at least at first) that Anna and Federico are done before kissing Federico. I think it's plausible that Raimondo wished for a romantic happiness with Federico that he never got to have, and eventually had to accept that forcing that on Federico would be just like Giuditta was forced to stay with Ferdinand even though she didn't feel about him the same way he did for her. Raimondo is also notably the only one of the three still inside the villa when the sun comes up, indicating that your wishes don't come true if you follow the legend. This is all well and good considering Raimondo's wish presumably, at least implicitly, included remaining gainfully employed, and he is going to be absolutely fucked when he finds out Anna broke the pendant.

I also think the themes of jealously and insecurity were handled really well here. I read Anna's crashout not so much as homophobic as much as a manifestation of her insecurities about hanging around someone her partner had also had sex with. She says some pretty regrettable things, but it is a lot to take in at once, and I think the story does a good job of letting each of the characters have their space, breathe, and then come to a logical, adult conclusion, with Anna starting to move past her insecurities, including with extending and olive branch to Raimondo, and Federico heeding advice from Raimondo that he had to some extent already learned from Anna ("I gave her time, just like I learned from her").

Conversely, I don't think Raimondo is really able to come to terms with those things in the same way. When Anna mentions seeing him again, all he responds with is "maybe." Perhaps the jealousy is too much for Raimondo to swallow and he thinks continuing to hang out with Federico will hurt both of their happiness. It's tough to take from his perspective. 

Writing:

I don't have a ton to comment on here, but just to point out a couple things, first, while I thought the writing style was good pretty much across the board, there were a few moments here and there that came across a little awkward. For example, "Geez, guys, I have nothing against straight people, but do keep it in the bedroom." I'm not sure if this is early enough in the story where you're still trying to softly exposit that Raimondo is gay, but you do that so many other times in so many other ways that I think you could have left this as a more natural sounding "Easy with the PDA, guys, I was only gone for ten minutes" or something to that effect.

While I thought the fight and subsequent recovery between Anna and Federico was well done, as described above, I thought some parts of the fight itself were a little contrived. Anna happening to call out the one sex act Federico had ever done with another man felt just a bit too convenient.

It didn't really bother my enjoyment or understanding of the VN, but I'm not really sure what the intent was for having second person narration for Anna and first person for Federico, other than just to differentiate the two perspectives generally.

Creativity:

Yeah, so, as I said in the story section, thematically this isn't the most revolutionary piece you'll ever see, but I thought the character work was seriously effective here and keeping everything grounded, mature, and realistic really helped convey the emotions you were going for, and the creative direction absolutely elevated the premise to make this one of my favorites of the jam so far (though it is still early).

At least until someone else comes along and points out that I got everything wrong.

Either way, you've been armoredopossum'd yet again.

Final score of 55 iridescent beetle shells out of 1 clump of fox fur of unknown origin that you shouldn't ask any further questions about.

For just a brief second there looking at the preview screenshots I thought Shiloh might have been some welcome opossum representation. My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined. 

For a first time effort, this wasn't bad at all - there's absolutely nothing wrong with some low stakes slice of life and I think you did well to synthesize your real world experiences into a coherent narrative. However, there's definitely a level of polish that separates this submission from the top entries in the jam. That's okay - those things come with time and experience, but for now, let's break it down:

Implementation of Theme:

Yeah let's get this out of the way early. Unless there is some deep cut myth you're referencing here, I'm not seeing it. What we're looking for is "folklore," and I don't think that's really present at all. If you stretch real hard maybe you could argue that the shrine is some kind of folklore, but that is, as stated, quite a stretch to begin with, and even then it's only referenced once and has no material impact on the narrative. 

Presentation:

Starting with the good here, the art is solid and there's actually quite a bit more of it than I was expecting. Having several expressions for the primary characters is great (even if I thought some of the expressions themselves were a bit too meme face-y) and I like that we got sprites even for characters that didn't appear very often. Chocco has some great "what if Mr. Peanut Butter was a divorced dad" energy and I'm a bit sad we didn't get to see him more.

All that said, there were a few moments where I wasn't sure if the expression the characters were showing always matched the conversation and there were some bizarre instances of sprites appearing in a scene for a second right before disappearing again with the transition to the next scene. Not sure if you intended to have the sprites appear in the new scene and just got your line order mixed up or something.

The biggest elephant in the room for presentation here is the total absence of sound. While the story is clearly still coherent without music or SFX, audio can be really effective at selling scenes beyond what's visually on screen, and considering the jam does offer stock music assets, I think there should have been at least some attempt to incorporate sound here. 

Not to discount the work of your proofreader as I'm sure she caught plenty in your drafts, but there were still a few typos and awkward phrasing. For example, "for the past summer two seasons" which presumably should have been "past two summer seasons" or, to make it cleaner, "past two summers" unless you really felt like "seasons" was necessary to incorporate the employee jargon. 

Story/Writing:

The premise here is very simple. Boy meets boy; boy hangs out with boy; boy likes boy; boy kisses boy; result. As stated above, there's nothing wrong with simple, and I think drawing so much from your experiences helped make Liam's and Greyson's dynamic and development feel believable. Everything felt like a plausible event or conversation that could happen between them, and I think their development was well-paced to end where the VN does at a solid first date. On the same vein, I thought the interactions with Shiloh and Brooke also felt like the characters were genuine friends, even if the "Bro. Brooooo. BRO. Bro? Bro." speak was a little much for my taste. 

While the conversations worked at a high level, I think one thing to keep in mind is the level of detail you actually need to get them across for the VN. Like, while Shiloh and Liam giving Greyson tips about the job as an intro is good, I don't think we really need to be getting into POS systems and stuff. That may be "lore accurate" so to speak for actual conversations you'd have at work, but your readers are getting dropped into this setting cold and getting too into the weeds can detract from the narrative itself. As another example, we don't really need to know "although motor vehicles aren’t allowed, since the golf cart is a company vehicle we’re fine." It doesn't add anything and you can safely cut that.

While the buildup was good,  the story ended pretty abruptly. Not sure if things were cut due to jam constraints, but carrying the story through to the end of the date might have been a more natural place to conclude. It also didn't help that the tone radically shifted leading up to the kiss as well; the dialogue is consistently bro-speak for most of the VN, then goes sappy and dramatic for the last ten lines, there's a kiss CG, and we're done. It's a bit jarring. I think maybe easing into that a bit more as well as giving the characters some room to breathe and react after the initial contact would soften the transition into romance a bit more. 

Creativity:

Like I said in the previous section, the narrative here isn't exactly revolutionary; it's simple and straightforward, but I think you injected enough personal flair to elevate it beyond being totally generic. With that said, I think there's also definitely some room for you to stretch your legs and maybe try something a bit more ambitious next time, and to that end I hope you stick with it and keep writing. If you do, I think this is a really solid foundation to build on. 

Final score of 12 rapidly minimized fanfic pages out of 3 pairs of underwear that Liam's dream man has never touched.

Yeah, to clarify, the kind of analysis I gave in the comment is really dependent on the intended tone of the piece. When I'm killing time on a plane playing Advance Wars I'm not exactly screaming "WILL NO ONE THINK OF THE POOR WIDOWS OF ORANGE STAR" lol. Furthermore, upon further reflection, I don't think this is all that dissimilar to the stuff I was writing back in college, so I'm not exactly immune either.

I interpreted the tone as going for more ethical depth, but, somewhat ironically given your preferences, it read much closer to a "traditional" war story, just without the action scenes. That all said, I am literally the only person who seems to have any issue here, so while I stand by my analysis since that's an honest assessment of how I processed the text, I can also accept that I'm the weird one.

Big wolf man make sword go brrr. Cheers. 

For what it's worth, while the process may have been stressful, it's never been more important for people to share art that comes from a place of genuine passion with the world, and I'm grateful you were able to put this out, even if it doesn't look exactly like what you envisioned a month ago :)

Deva is too pure for this world. Like the concept a happy tail wag was given human (anthro, whatever) form. I wanted to hug him. But... "he draws, he writes, he codes," huh? Those are quite the skills to spotlight in this context...

I thought there was a lot to like here, but also some things that seemed a bit rushed and not really fleshed out the way they could have been, likely at least in part due to jam constraints.

As is personal tradition, I'll break everything down by rating criteria.

Implementation of Theme:

Admittedly, my knowledge of Sanskrit poetry, and Indian folklore generally, is a little rusty (read: utterly nonexistent), so I can't really comment on authenticity or interpretation. I can, however, confidently state that some form of folklore was incorporated into the story in a way that was integral to the narrative, so hopefully you won't mind too much if I just give you full points here and move on.

Presentation:

I really like the art style (especially the colored pencil(? I am not a visual artist) style CGs), and boy, there was a lot of art in this, too. I think it's very impressive that you managed to incorporate so many sprites with multiple expressions on top of several CGs on such a tight timeline. Really, really good work here.

Music was a highlight as well, though I did have two gripes. First, there was a speaker popping-esque effect on one of the tracks that I found a bit grating, and second, I thought the music that plays before Tyler's first meeting was maybe a bit too repetitive, though in fairness I don't think that actually plays for very long and I only heard it for as long as I did because I pause so often to take notes, so maybe that's more of a personal issue.

Definitely some proofreading and consistency issues here as well. Typos abound, and there were some other hiccups like the narration referring to Aryaman by name even though we hadn't learned it yet and his name tag still said "Mysterious Wolf", and Tyler telling Aryaman that he only bought two tacos despite the previous scene making a point to emphasize that he always buys three. They're not game-breaking issues by any means, and I understand it's hard to focus on this stuff when working against a deadline, but this one really could've benefitted from another proofreading pass.

Story:

So, broad strokes here, I like what you're trying to do with the story. The tone feels very consistently lighthearted and cozy throughout, and I like our character templates, with the endearingly grumpy protagonist, the curious celestial being, Best Boy Deva, and, as someone who has personally had a long and tumultuous toxic relationship with "Tortilla Ringer," I wish that would have earned me a Juniper by now. It has not. Mostly just slightly elevated cholesterol, really.

There are two main issues I have with the story here: first is pacing, and some of Tyler and Aryaman's interactions.

For pacing, I'm less concerned with how long the scenes take per se and more concerned with what details were actually important to include and what could have been cut to keep the story moving. For the first example of this, I'm going to yoink Blue's critique about the way food is handled below. I get the feeling that food is something you're passionate about, and if that's true, it certainly shows, but I think something to keep in mind going forward is how much those descriptions actually contribute to the narrative. The tacos are actually an example of this done well, with the food being a catalyst for discussion for the two leads to learn more about each other. On the opposite side of the spectrum, we have the cafe scene, where we get very specific details about everyone's orders, but nothing else really happens. If we're going to follow these characters to the cafe, we need to see them interact and play off each other more; if you don't have the time to do that because of the jam, or you're struggling to come up with a conversation to have, that's fine, just cut the scene. 

Same kind of thing goes for trying to develop the Deva/Juniper romance - you can sow the seeds of chemistry here, but details about how they end up dating feel a bit tacked on and unnecessary, and I'm not sure if the random customer scene needed to be quite as long as it was. Maybe that was the reference to your other work, but it was very lost on me.

Pivoting to the central relationship, I'm not sure I really bought Tyler and Aryaman's first meeting playing out the way it did. Up until this point, everything we see of Tyler is socially awkward and some degree of socially anxious, even getting flustered just from his interactions with the Taco Bell guy. So I'm not sure if the implication was that Aryaman's magic had enough of an impact on him to change this (and I'm not sure the text would support that based on how literally floored Tyler is when Aryaman flies), but he seems to have way too easy of a time talking with the strange blue wolf he found in the woods compared to how he's been presented to this point. You'd think he might have a few more questions or be a bit more unsure about this situation before taking it at face value and giving him a taco.

There's another detail in that conversation too about not being able to return (to somewhere) if Aryaman stays too long, and I'm not sure this is ever followed up on? Like, in terms of relationship development I think kissing on the couch is a fine place to be at when the story ends, but a lot of the couple's conversations and interactions feel a bit too superficial if there's actual risk involved. Considering the scope of the project, I feel like it might have been a good idea to clarify that line about not being able to go back, or maybe even deleting it entirely since the current script doesn't seem to have the time to contend with those stakes.

Also, just a minor note since it was briefly mentioned in your response below, I do not think this VN needed a sex scene and I'm happy with that not making it into the final cut. I think kissing and cuddling far better matched the tone of the project, but I tend to trend less horny than other readers, so respectable minds may differ.

Writing:

The writing here is decent - certainly competent, though I think there is room for improvement. Sentence structure can be a little choppy, so maybe focus on some more variety in syntax, and watch out for common issues like focusing on active over passive voice where you can. I also noticed there were a few times when lines seemed rather repetitive, like "struggling to get his words out" followed in the next line by "was able to get a few words out". You can fix this pretty easily by just changing the latter to "was able to speak". Also in that conversation, Aryaman states he is a "music player... that is all" like three times in a handful of lines. Not sure if that's a reference to the poem this is inspired by, but if not, same deal as the previous example. Just another thing to watch out for when you're doing your proofreading runs.

I am also going to disagree with one of Blue's points below about the references to AI and other societal malaises. Like, to be clear, on a philosophical level, I'm right there with you pal, but going off on those tangents can also really disrupt the flow of a narrative and make it feel like the author is directly airing their grievances rather than the story maintaining its natural cadence. This felt especially egregious with the corvid/croissant bit, which seemed to veer way off course from what was actually happening "in-universe". While clearly people can respond to this stuff in different ways, I'd definitely encourage caution with how you deploy that in the future.

Creativity:

I think creativity was absolutely a strong suit here. While the core plot concept of supernatural being + mortal falling in love isn't particularly groundbreaking, the specific angles you took towards that with the incorporation of the folklore theme more than made up for it. There was clearly plenty of inspiration in the visual and musical direction as well, and I think your creativity and passion really shined through.

Final score here of 3 sweet potato tacos out of 2 copies of "Hot Rivals" with uncomfortably sticky pages.

It honestly feels almost criminal to me that, at time of writing, we're four days into the review period and seemingly no one's touched this yet. There were some issues here and there, especially in presentation (and I'll get to that), but for a brand new team's first effort this was excellent. 

Breaking things down further:

Implementation of Theme: 

Yeah, sure. Requirement met, box checked, etc. I don't know anything about Mallorcan folklore and wouldn't have guessed this had any basis in real world legend if you hadn't said so, but even aside from that we have our quest to stop the dragon and our heroes themselves becoming the folklore as their tales are told through the town in the good and less good endings. I'm quite satisfied here.

Presentation:

Yeah let's get this one out of the way early because this area had some issues. Before I get to those, I want to acknowledge that there were still highlights in the presentation: the sprites you provided for the main cast, though limited, were well done and captured each of their respective personalities, and the music choices were all spot on. I especially appreciated the spicy battle theme. Love me some guitar-focused soundtracks.

Some of the effects were really well done here as well - I thought the purple fading into the screen as Robert is possessed in the bad ending (and maybe the mid one too?) was really effective and the first dragon roar kinda made me jump.

One big issue here is what I think are some missed "stop sound" cues. Very early on in the game, I had the footstep SFX continue all the way through the flashback to meeting Valenti and Roldan and back to camp. At that point I figured something was wrong, and saving, closing, and reloading fixed the issue, but it happened again with fire crackling SFX in the good ending route. Definitely something to look out for since that was quite annoying.

The bad and mid endings both throw an error - for the bad ending it's before the credits and for the mid it's after. Might want to double check your labels here. Also in the bad ending, there was a reference to fighting "Josep"? Maybe that was Lambert's name in a prior draft and accidentally made it through, otherwise I have no idea who that is.

There were quite a few proofreading errors throughout, at least one instance of text running outside the box in the mid route, and sometimes colored text could be hard to see with the transparent text box. This was especially true for name tags and Patron's lines in the bad ending (I'd guess this was supposed to happen to some extent to signify Patron's connection with Robert slipping, but it was really hard to make out and might be something to consider for accessibility purposes).

I know it's very difficult to produce a lot of assets during a jam, especially when you're still figuring out how the whole process works, but if you had more time, this would definitely benefit from more sprites with varied expressions as well as some CGs for key moments. Your writing for the sex scene was good, but it is a little awkward to just be staring at a static image of a tent the whole time, and if we got an image of Magdalena's mural that would've been a great coda to end the story on.

Story/Writing:

Based on some comments I've read on other entries, I'm a bit worried this VN starts a tad slow for others' tastes, but I generally thought this was really well done, with some of the best character work I've seen so far this jam. The banter feels genuine and natural with all of the main cast maintaining their distinct personalities instead of dissolving into generic quip slingers, and I bought that this was a party that actually cared for each other and had some chemistry. 

I think introducing Patron right out the gate is a great hook that builds intrigue even when there's not much action happening on-screen. Even though the VN is on the longer side for a jam entry, every scene feels like it has a purpose and no scene really feels like its overstaying its welcome. Each scene feels like it's building on the characters and their relationships with each other, which makes their inevitable demise feel all the more tragic. Said demises also feel weighty and dramatic without slipping into melodrama, which is a difficult balance to achieve.

Writing felt pretty solid across the board, though there were times in action scenes where I lost a sense of where everyone was positioned, and this occurred at one point during the sex scene where I wasn't sure what position Robert and Oriol were supposed to be in. 

For critiques, while it's always nice to see branching paths and player input, I'm not sure I feel about how the bad and mid endings were implemented.

Addressing the bad ending first, I just didn't buy that Robert would completely turn the way he did. Like, sure, he could have doubts and want to run away, but the shift into full psycho just didn't really seem in line with how the character had been portrayed to that point. Thankfully that branch was pretty short so it didn't linger long, but it felt a bit like having a bad ending just for the sake of having a bad ending.

My issue with the mid ending is more in the choice itself; we're giving the option of making the cold, logical decision to leave Valenti and Roldan behind to cover your advance or stay with Valenti despite his urging. First, it's something of a pet peeve of mine when stories have characters dawdle or argue when another character is sacrificing themselves to buy time because it's kind of wasting their sacrifice (a former partner pointed this out to me and I just can't unsee it now), and second, the difference between the two choices barely feels material for the massive effect it has on the outcome since even if you stay, you have to leave Valenti and Roldan almost immediately afterwards anyway. Like, if you choose to leave Valenti, you become a thrall until the B team can save the day, but if you leave Valenti two minutes later you win. To be honest, I didn't get much out of either of the alternate endings and I question how much they added to the experience.

For other minor gripes, I did feel like Na Coca's compound was ridiculously easy to get into compared to how Roldan described it in the previous scene. Like I don't even know why they had to use the ruse on the kobolds, I feel like any of the techniques they had used against Lambert would dispatch them before they had time to sound the alarm. For that matter, I'm not sure if Lambert was just supposed to be really good, but the party seem to be able to take down thralls much easier in the compound than they did in the first fight. Like, yeah they all eventually get overrun, but they take down quite a few and it took a coordinated 4v1 to beat Lambert.

Creativity:

It's still early and I have like 30 of these to go still, but I highly doubt I'm going to see Mallorcan folklore featured again. The plot itself is straightforward enough - fantasy RPG party goes on a quest to defeat the big bad and they get their bittersweet victory, but I think the way these characters were realized added a lot to the formula.

As stated above, for a first time effort, this really killed it, and I look forward to seeing what you can do with more time for polish. I will be watching your career with great interest.

Final score of 15 sick flamenco guitar riffs out of 12 perfectly fried panades. 

Out of all the entries I've read so far for May Wolf this year, this is easily the one that feels the most like it was typed one-handed. There's nothing inherently wrong with having a horny story, but in this particular case I feel like the horny overshadowed everything else and left the project feeling a bit shallow.

Let's break it down further:

Implementation of Theme:

Yeah, I think you covered the bases here. It's a bit thin, like pretty much everything else in the VN, but you created a legend/belief for Solus' tribe and successfully integrated that into the narrative. Solus prays to the moon for help, the moon provides help in an unexpected way, and it's not through death like he originally believed, but he does get to go to the moon to experience paradise, with "paradise" here meaning getting to nut on dudes in peace. Neat. Good enough to meet the "folklore" requirement for me.

Presentation:

This was easily the VN's strongest area, but it did have a few hiccups as well. The artist absolutely killed it with the sprites and CGs here; I thought the art style was really appealing, and the sprites were solidly expressive. There were some additional details, like the blinking eyes, that aren't necessarily common for jam entries, so that was great to see.

However, there were a few places where I felt the sprites weren't used as effectively as they could have been. You have such a good expression for Solus looking scared during his first interaction with Lucius, but you barely use this at all when he's being stalked by a predator in the ominous woods. It really feels like the terror should have been used for the direwolf and the sort of tense, cautious stare should have been used for waking up with Lucius. You already have the art, it's just a matter of deploying it in the right places.

Same goes for SFX - when we start the encounter with the direwolf, Solus comments, "I'm not sure what kind of animal could make that sound." It's literally just a howl though. It doesn't even really sound threatening. But then you have really animalistic, almost distorted snarl you use later, and that seems much more fitting for the line and would build the tension better.

There were also quite a few proofreading issues here (perhaps related to the "one-handed" comment above) though nothing really inhibited my understanding, and there was a mistake with Solus' sprite leading into the sex scene. The text describes Lucius reaching into Solus' shirt, but his sprite already had his shirt off for some time. I'm wondering if when going through the script you read the line about the shirt blowing away in the wind and confused the shirt covering his legs with the one he was actually wearing when you went in and added the sprites. 

Last note here, there's also an error that displays at one point, "Image 'bg black' not found". Presumably this was meant to be a black screen, and there was a black screen anyway, so it didn't impact much, but I just wanted to flag that.

Story/Writing/Creativity:

Yeah I'm just kinda mashing all these together here because they're pretty related for this entry.

To be blunt, this is about as basic as it gets for a May Wolf entry. Guy is sad and alone; guy is rescued by sexy male wolf; guy immediately falls for sexy male wolf; luckily sexy male wolf is gay and also immediately attracted to guy; they bone; happily ever after.

Look, I'm not judging your fantasy here. If all you're looking for is a steamy sex scene where you get swept off your feet by the hot, yoked, foreign guy, more power to you. However, I would contend that the sex may be even hotter if we had some characters to dig into.

Right now, the actual character development, or even definition, for Solus and Lucius is practically nonexistent. Solus is meek and gay, Lucius is charming and gay. That's really it. Like, the one bit of backstory we get for Solus is turning his back on Clive, a pretty uncool act which he never really has to answer for or contend with.

Actually, let's spare a thought for Clive for a second. You go through your own gay awakening, you fool around with the other gay guy in town, and you get caught. You're getting exiled, but hey, it's alright, maybe your lover will come wi- oh, no, he sold you out, guess you're on your own. And then the guy that screwed you over gets to hook up with the hot wolf guy, immediately thinks about how much better the wolf's dick is than yours the whole time, and gets to go to gay furry heaven while you get eaten by a grue in the woods or whatever.

#JusticeForClive

There's a comment below that argues that you spend too much time fleshing out the setting, but I actually disagree. If anything, I feel like the worldbuilding is pretty half-baked here. Like... we hear that the village needs able-bodied men for a war, but this is literally never mentioned again. The village sends Solus out on his own, but this makes no sense. Even if they don't care if he dies, why would you not send someone with him to report back if he does? Otherwise what's the point of scouting in the first place? Why do the moon folks want to come back to the planet? How'd they get to the moon in the first place? If they have space travel, how do they not have probes or drones that they could use to determine the extent of sapient life on the planet? If the moon people had never been to the planet before, how are they communicating? I could keep going, but I think you get the idea.

There are ways that you could tinker with the story to fix a lot of its issues. Instead of opening with a NVL mode exposition dump, have Solus investigate the forest with another soldier from the village. Convey attitudes, emotions, and background through the conversation they have with each other. They can encounter the dire wolf, at which point the other soldier flees back to the village and leaves Solus to die as a distraction. Solus feels betrayed by this, breaking his last bond with home and making going to the moon a much easier decision later. Lucius, who is on the planet to silently scout, sees what happened and breaks mission parameters to save Solus, showing he has a strong moral compass that can surpass his sense of duty. When you do have Lucius and Solus interact, let that conversation breathe. Let them actually get to know each other and find common ground, build chemistry before you get into boners and abs. 

Those are just suggestions, but the point is that there are ways you can elevate your story beyond just revolving around a steamy sex scene, and should you choose to keep writing, your VNs will be better for it.

On that note, this looks like it may have been your first project, and I want to emphasize that this wasn't terrible or anything, and you shouldn't take all the feedback personally. I do this for everyone. This VN was fairly basic and generic, but I think it does give you a good foundation to build on, and I do hope you stick with it to see how you develop.

Final score of, eh, I don't know, 6 Clives out of 9 Cusslers.