(Review originally written for MAY WOLF 2024)

Cruisin' for Love... and murder – it's a lot of fun! Its satire of reality TV is delightful, and its tasteful use of NVL mode keeps the game feeling dynamic to read while also smoothing over the timeskips. Although the art is very "game jam" in its level of polish & detail, things like the animated title screen and the use of music to indicate when the characters are on camera are very much appreciated, as are the accessibility options. In general, the work feels like a VN very in touch with its medium.

It won't probably surprise you to hear that being unfinished hurts the overall product a lot. I have to admit: not even having the titular murder in the story yet felt blue-balling to the degree that I started second-guessing whether I had imagined the second part of the title all along. The plot elements Cruisin' is playing with – murder mystery, a competition with a clearly defined endpoint – just have a very hard time shining without a climax in sight. I think leaning further into the reality TV inspiration and structuring the VN like an episode of one of those could have salvaged the concept, but this stretch is just too brief to really have an internal structure or a clear arc with a satisfying payoff.

I'd love, love to see more of this, but the currently released portion just reads badly as a standalone package and is hard to rate favorably as an entry in the game jam. (Also, as a sidenote, I'm having a hard time figuring out the connection to the theme?)

(Review originally written for MAY WOLF 2024)

Firstly: Nalet's Park is nicely atmospheric and comes with an art style that feels like it matches what the evocative prose is going for perfectly. Good music choices, too.

Despite the short length, the conflict works on an emotional level, and you get just enough about the characters. The game does need a little line editing in the form tightening – I think having relatively short lines is just very important for this medium – but the incorporation of poetry is a fun choice that serves the scope of the story well, providing natural opportunities for transitions and timeskips. It's a great mix of formally familiar and adventurous, recognizable as a VN while having such a fresh touch.

As for some nitpicks: the societal conflict in the background could use a little more explication – it feels kind of abstract since so much of it is just in what the characters say. Also, the incredibly brief ending stings a little; given that the prose is pretty good at conjuring evocative imagery, it would have felt right to end on something a little more vibrant than the very simple exchange. The angle for the game jam's theme feels a little obscure, too, although I get how the concept is used in the poetic sections.

Still, Nalet's Park packs a punch for being such a short read. Congratulations on your first published VN.

(Review originally written for MAY WOLF 2024)

So, ok, the presentation is admittedly quite sparse – there's no audio (discounting some sort of technological mishap on my end), the title screen is imageless, Hiram's name color is too dark, and some of the backgrounds work quite badly with the sprites in terms of perspective. When a story has such a strong sense of tone & style, it would be really nice for the visual and auditive aspects to reflect it as well. Although the writing feels very natural for the medium, there's really nothing making Maywolf Mysteries feel like it benefits from being a visual novel.

That being said, while information is not conveyed with perfect clarity all the time, the amazing script nails most of the crucial elements of the genre. The characters are memorable in their limited screentime and easy to get a grasp of, the in-story time limit makes the pacing feel sharp, and the solidly constructed mystery itself has a unique furry flair to it thanks to the, uh, mechanics. While the meta elements could have felt slightly tiresome with weaker execution, the wacky worldbuilding is just so much fun it's hard to care. Even the title strikes a perfect balance between descriptively literal and expressive.

Anyway, this might be on me here, but after forgetting to pay attention to the jam theme in particular, I'm not sure how it is supposed to be invoked. In any case, it feels like a missed opportunity not to do some meta stuff with it, considering the tone of the piece.

A quite unpolished game in general, but won me over with its sheer sense of fun.

(Review originally written for MAY WOLF 2024)

The presentation is functional but somewhat barebones on the whole; the backgrounds and music choices are inoffensive, and all the other stuff is mostly just the Ren'py defaults. While the engine does deserve some of the blame, not having the option to choose the language at startup is a pretty painful UX papercut – I really recommend looking into a better way to do it, since you're in the business of releasing dual-language VNs. Some more nitpicks: transitioning instantly back to the titlescreen from the last line is somewhat of a mood-killer, and the title is cut off in the Itch thumbnail.

As for the writing, it's sharp and comes with a clear voice. After having playing that VN, it's fun to spot the \i{NeveN}-isms – all the short, witty comments with exclamation marks remind me of Erik's narrative voice. There's a lot of fun character writing in the beginning, and I also like how the game is patient enough to revel in the mundanity for so long that the genre shift really lands. I wonder, though, if having stronger foreshadowing would have made the juxtaposition feel stronger (at the cost of some surprise, I guess).

Overall, I do get the sense that the game could have been slightly more formally adventurous and stronger with its imagery; how the backstory is ultimately revealed, for instance, is not particularly interesting or effective. Just would have been nice to get the chaos and the excitement of the finale get reflected in the form and the prose as well, you know? The poem is well-written and a really nice touch, though, especially as such a stark tonal break. I'd probably call that the best moment of the game, even if I maybe feel like there could have been something in the visuals or the audio to really underscore it.

Anyway, all in all, Blazing Passion is an enjoyable read; my congratulations to the NeveN team for delivering yet another solid MAY WOLF entry.

A narrative turned on its head, an isekai gone wrong. Not the first, but perhaps the first to deny the reality of the isekai altogether as a construct, a fictional item wherein the narrator can play.

The diegetic focus on sounds meant that music only played when stated--it could have been enhanced to have some nature noises and other items instead to fill in the gaps to continue the conceit of "the only sounds played for the audience is actual sounds the protagonist hears".

A brief terse short work that I think only really fumbled by filling up space with beastman lore, when the protagonist would tune that out altogether. With a little tinkering for the focus, the strengths of this piece would shine even more so.

I'll premise this by saying that I appreciated Silverstone for taking risks and making me think about what it was about: my impressions over it have changed a lot as I read the story and explore all the routes. What story the VN is trying to tell is not immediately apparent. In fact, even after finishing the VN for the first time (I got the "good" ending first) I was still left a bit befuddled. It was not until playing the other endings that I got to appreciate the overarching story the VN was trying to tell. The execution is far from perfect, but I praise it for being daring.

SPOILERS to follow!

On the writing and presentation side, the art had a consistent style to it and the prose was pretty good taken on a sentence by sentence level. I do have to say that the biggest shortcoming for me was a general mishmash when looking at the larger picture. On the writing side, there were some jarring shifts from flowery to very simplistic prose, especially when it comes to dialogue. The narration, that drops refined words at you like "fugue" or interesting turns of phrase like food "residing" in the fridge, is awkwardly juxtaposed with a main character who talks mostly on the level of "Aurgh, I had a fucking hangover". The dialogue in general is a very strange beast, characters will state absolute banal things and the narration/other character has a habit of overreacting to what was just said, which left me plenty confused. (This is not helped by the characters having somewhat confused attitudes throughout, especially when you take player choices into account. Walt will shift from being love dovey with you to being frigid and rude based on random minor choices like whether you offered him your breakfast or not).

My other main criticism is that, considering the basic premise is that of two characters developing a very close connection in the span of a single day... Not a whole lot happens during that one day. Except for the MC sharing a very intimate piece of personal information, everything else is just mundane busywork and casual conversations. I feel like more time would have been better spent actually depicting the characters establishing some sort of connection outside of that one scene.

Now for the part I enjoyed the most: like I said, I love stories that force me to think and that force me to reconsider how you viewed certain things based on the unfolding of new information.

My impressions after getting the "good ending" was basically "Ok, this was a cute and harmless little tale about a character with some personal baggage opening up and finding the courage to step out of his comfort zone. I guess it was ok, even though I'm not sure what that post-credit ending scene really adds to anything."

Then, as I was playing the "worst ending" and seeing how wildly the ending was changing, I had a moment where I went "Oh, the story is trying to depict how the ultimate result is the same (death), the only thing we can really change is what precedes that point. I love that!"

But then after the identity of the assailant was revealed in the two bad endings, I guess I had to reconsider my interpretation once more: the story was really trying to be a horror all along. I think it was a nice reveal, and it was nice how the same final sentence about the Silver Bullets changes meaning depending on the context and makes you realize what's really going on. (Though ngl, I would have preferred the subtle message about being daring because death is coming for us all, over "love me or I'm gonna fuck you up real bad" lol)

So, while I don't think all creative choices worked, if you take this as a horror story that was simply holding its cards close to its chest, I think it was a very interesting read, and the kind of VN that would spark discussion.

(Review originally written for MAY WOLF 2024)

The prose is functional; I think the biggest nitpick I have is the repetition of some phrases and words. In terms of pacing, the game patient but not slow, taking its time to set up properly and managing to imply enough history to make the developments feel earned. I also like that the comedy inherent to the premise goes so understated – it's all pleasantly mundane in spite of involving a wacky magic gem with inexplicable powers.

That being said... given that there's a not-insignificant amount of words to read and that the plot leans towards thin, with the mechanics and the mysteries of the whole thing being so vague, I feel like Expanding Sizes and Feelings could have safely ended on a more conclusive note. I'm not even necessarily talking about resolving every plot thread; just something more satisfying as an emotional ending would be enough.

The jam theme is applied in a bluntly literal but effective way. The only thing I'm not quite sure about is the "and" in the title – I feel like the metaphorical link between physical and mental expansion would be the most interesting thing for a story like this to explore, and there's not necessarily a lot of that in here.

(Review originally written for MAY WOLF 2024)

The art is, first of all, lovely. The sprites are amazingly expressive, and the stylish animations make What We Were Wolf feel so kinetic to read. It's just nice to look at!

I get the lack of narration as a stylistic choice, but I feel like the dialog doesn't quite pack enough of a punch to make up for it – the game feels incredibly fast-paced, no scene having really time to land properly, and the tone stays muted throughout. With this kind of thing, I feel it would be okay to exaggerate and dig deeper into melodrama, kind of like a lot of stage plays do. This, I think, leans slightly too far towards literal & flat. (It might also be that the visuals aspect does feel a little sparse sometimes; the VN rarely lingers on images long enough to really evoke a mood.)

It's a compelling exercise in style, but I feel like the execution could be honed to make a stronger whole. The jam's theme feels very satisfyingly realized, though.

(Review originally written for MAY WOLF 2024)

Stylish right from the title screen, which sets the tone perfectly. One area that could be pushed further is animation – the title cards feel a little jarring with no transition to or from them, for instance. You also kind of notice the fact that the sprite doesn't have a ton of expressions; the heaviness of the subject matter and the extreme emotions the story invokes aren't really visible, and it doesn't necessarily feel purposefully dissonant. But apart from that, the art & the UI are polished and pretty to look at.

Writing is nice as well! The characters feel precisely defined enough for the small scope, with bits and pieces of history but not so much backstory the story drowns in exposition. There's a lot of sharp imagery (the remnants of a drink in a glass being compared to blood is a particularly memorable one), and the story only ever feels appropriately claustrophobic, maintaining a forward momentum despite its place in the "nothing happens" genre.

Whether the ending gets too fanciful is debatable. I did not hate it, but it maybe felt like it lost the grounded tone of the preceding material without really reaching apocalyptic heights to match it in effectiveness?

Finally, as for the jam theme, I do see it there, but I also wonder if the game could have just gone with the Sun going supernova to wrestle with the idea a little more explicitly. If I was just reading this with no context, it would be pretty difficult to guess that "expanding" was the prompt. That being said, I enjoy what the game does with the concept overall, so don't listen to me.