A lot of super positive things have been said about your game so far, and I agree with the vast majority of them for sure. This represents a pretty overwhelming amount of work for a month and is one of the most original stories in the jam. So please let me start by congratulating you and saying how much I enjoyed this game.

I think, too, because so much of this was good that I hope you don't mind me nitpicking on a few things. I'm going to spend more text on these than the compliments, but know that that's not representative of how I feel on the whole at all.

1) The dark, simple UI under-sells how creative this story is. You have a chance to sell the fantastical nature of this game visually before the reader even starts playing, and I think if you can take advantage of that you should.

2) Some of the formatting quirks were really funny to me at the start but became a bit distracting as the story continued. RNST said that not talking in script-talk would be out of character, but I think it ultimately made it more of a burden to read through. The bit was a good one, but I feel that it overstayed its welcome a bit. Similarly, it took me time to adjust to Lorem's typing font when the rest of the text for a given passage was already available. If I could change it, I'd limit the bits to the first few times you chat with them then have a reason it becomes normal again.

On the other hand, little jokes like the passage being temporarily right-aligned were really fun.

3) For the ultimate length of the story, introducing so many characters so quickly made it harder for me to understand and sympathize with them. If there's any way to spread that out, I think it would be helpful.

But, again, having said all of that - I thought it was quite fun. Lots of meta-jokes and pop culture references are not usually my jam but the breadth of references kept it fun for me. I also agree with what yousayrandy said about the character creator. I liked that it *was* spread out and allowed for so much detail. I have more experience with text adventures than pure interactive fiction, and so I've enjoyed getting to see the depth of things like that.

Please forgive me for typing so much. Thank you for submitting this to the jam, and well done!

This was AMAZING!

The story was great, and I definitely want to read the next part of this. I so want my characters to fight more anomalies. All of the references to fairytales, tropes and such made it such a fun experience. I felt so smart when I got a reference (though I probably missed a few). It was also nice to see my choices, especially in terms of character customization, being references throughout the games.

I think it took me a few food hours to go through the whole thing, but it was worth every seconds of it. The sheer size of the game being made in one month is incredible. Truly a great job! 

(Little nitpicks: there were a few tiny issues on the formatting/typos/lil bugs, but I sent you like tons of messages about them already)

I'm going to ramble a bit about this, so bear with me. Apologies in advance.

I am often asking myself when I'm playing a game with a story: "Does this NEED to be a video game?" I usually land somewhere in the middle, but generally, my answer is: "This COULD be told in a book/movie/TV show, but it's better told as a video game." There are VERY few exceptions to this, and this is one of them. This story could not be told as anything other than a video game, at least not nearly as effectively.

This is probably one of the cleverest uses of a "character creator" I've ever seen. I was able to scarily match up my character to my real life self, and that added SO MUCH to the immersion -- something no other medium could possibly come close to achieving. As a result, the choices felt wholly mine in a way that most other games, especially of this type, normally don't. Even if the minor changes in the beginning don't end up paying off, in the back of my mind, I know they're part of my character. Something as simple as switching the flavor of milk, for example -- probably leads to nothing, but I know that I, personally, prefer chocolate, and this character is me. Brilliant, brilliant stuff. I love it.

I also think your usage of the theme is the best I've seen so far, and will likely not be matched. It's obviously very meta and literal, somehow super obvious, but in a million years I never would have thought of it. I really quite enjoyed that.

My only nitpicks are, for starters, I think this needs to be refined just a bit. I got lost on how this world actually worked -- partly due to the distraction of making sure my character was JUST RIGHT, partly because there's a lot to take in all at once. There were also times when I felt like my characters was drifting from what I thought he should do, even with the granular choices. That's only the case because you did such an amazing job making me feel like the character, that even the slightest deviation really hurt. A lesser game wouldn't have this issue, so it's partly a compliment. None of this couldn't be worked out with a couple more passes.

With all of that, and with how lengthy and ambitious this whole thing was, I am extremely impressed, and only wished I had time to dig through it more. Very well done. Congratulations.