(Review originally written for MAY WOLF 2024)

If some other games of yours almost break the fundamental limits Ren'py, then this one might just actually do so; it made my laptop (which is, like, not that shitty and can run Minecraft just fine) scream for mercy. Some of the most visually intense scenes were actively laggy, while button presses in the codex took seconds to register. Limits of the jam and the engine aside, I feel like Wolf Bolo Two might be reaching a point where performance should be an active consideration – a lot of people play VNs on low-end devices, after all.

The sheer density of the visuals is kind of reflected in how the game reads as well. I was confused by the pixel filter at first, but in hindsight, it may be the only thing making it possible to see what's going on when so many characters are on the screen at the same time. Alternate ways to deal with this could have been explored, I think; the worldbuilding would have allowed having the wolves appear and disappear more flexibly. The UI is fun in its theming, though, and downright tasteful while still remaining true to the Unagi spirit.

In terms of writing, I think the conceit is communicated well enough at the cost of a lot of exposition-heavy dialogue. Honestly, battles aside, the pacing almost feels too quick? There's a lot of stuff happening and not a lot of downtime spent just hanging out in this world and forming an emotional connection to these characters. It's too early to judge the plot in its entirety, but I hope the last act has some crazy stuff in store, since everything has felt quite straightforward and literal so far. (oh and apparently the whole thing is a reference to a video game i haven't played, maybe someone who has will have something more insightful to say)

It does feel more than a little disappointing that there is no interactivity to the battle system, considering how many words the story spends on it and how hard the technobabble threatens to drown moments of characterization and plot happening within the fights. The structure even mirrors what you'd find in games you can actually play –there's the tutorial battle against a weak enemy, fights getting progressively more difficult and convoluted, filler random encounters between plot-relevant boss battles...

You just have to wonder: is it necessary to replicate the inspirations this faithfully without some kind of additional layer to provide the engagement you'd get from interactivity? There are strictly linear ways people enjoy this kind of thing – watching streamers play games, card game animes that do a little more to narrativize and dramatize the fictional game – but I don't think Wolf Bolo Two really reaches for the appeal of any of them.

There are a lot of bold ideas executed here. The first minute or so, with its onslaught of wacky exposition and wild visuals, was some of the most thrilling stuff in the entire jam for me. Unfortunately, a lot of the later parts just felt... kind of tedious to read, in a way? The constant references to other FVNs stop feeling exciting after a while, quality banter is too sparse for how endless the battles are, and the plot is as simple as the characters are thin. Really hoping to see a third-act rebound for this, but the currently released portion is far less compelling than your entry last year.

(Review originally written for MAY WOLF 2024)

A pretty good read! The presentation is admirably polished – the UI is stylish (I could lose the texture behind the text box, though), and there are plenty of nice audiovisual choices that underscore the horror moments effectively. One thing I'm not quite sure about: does the art style lean too far towards cartoony & cutesy to really work with the genre? This kind of juxtaposition can feel purposeful, but I fear how the characters are drawn is just kind of inherently silly, making the goriest image in Silverstone: The Morning After fall flat. Also, while I shouldn't be mistaken for a music critic, a lot of the songs sounded, for a lack of better term, a little "default presets"-esque.

The VN gets a lot of mileage out of its nonlinear structure. I like how it recontextualizes various details across the routes. Though this may just amount to personal preference, I thought there were a lot of choices, however, especially since most of them served the same function of deciding what ending you were heading towards. The story did not feel difficult to navigate – getting all three endings was straightforward – but more could perhaps have been done to experiment with the mechanic.

As for the prose: smooth to read, largely without the kinds of polish issues characteristic to game jam projects; the horror scenes in particular were full of atmosphere. My feelings about the character drama are more complicated. I think the post-credits scene for one of the routes, where the story goes into retrospective mode, felt like the most affective moment in that regard – the main story itself is so sudden and limited in scope that it's hard for it to hit emotionally. I felt like there was not enough outside context to really hone in the impact of this one night for both parties and really sell its narrative importance.

Also, there's nothing wrong with wearing one's influences on one's sleeve, but referencing Echo while also replicating its central horror elements – a small town known as a hotspot of paranormal activity, a mysterious voice haunting the protagonist via the narration – felt kind of jarring. Maybe it's just that with the setting not getting a lot of description and all the questions remaining without answers, the game simply had no opportunity to set itself apart yet. Still, it doesn't necessarily make for the most thrilling intro to the larger project lore-wise.

While all elements may not play together perfectly well, the amount of work put into the game is impressive, and it has fantastic moments of horror. Looking forward to more, especially if it keeps those strengths while also becoming a little more precise and purposeful in its literary intentions.

(Review originally written for MAY WOLF 2024)

Psycho Spiral Beast: incredibly weird and kind of rough all around. Writing-wise, the tense is inconsistent, typos are plentiful, and many sentences flow strangely. The medium isn't used perfectly, either – dialogue is sometimes jankily presented through the narration, and a couple of lines are too long for the Ren'py default text box design.

Surface-level issues aside, the story is just kind of confusing and doesn't feel like it coheres into any kind of clear point or emotion. If "What is real and what isn't?" is supposed to be understood as the central question, I have no clue about the answer. Mostly, I guess, it feels like the plot opens in the middle without ever circling back into whatever inciting incident started it all and ends without a clear conclusion.

I'm kind of doubting myself as a reader here, honestly – did not get it. (No hint of the jam theme either, as far as I can tell.) Points for sound design, though.

You can tell the VN was made with love and passion and is telling a story that is dear to its creator. There is a lot of emotional earnestness in the VN and the CGs were very nice.

Unfortunately, I must admit that, if I take the VN at face value, as trying to tell a heartfelt story, it didn't really work for me. Not only you have the classic problem of "too much telling, not enough showing", but it seemed like the main way for the VN to get its point across was having the characters scream at each other's faces how much THEY FUCKING MATTERED TO EACH OTHER. This intensity did not feel earned and didn't really help me to uderstand these characters or their relationships on an emotional level.

Having said that, I had a blast reading this VN on a more ironic level. Both thanks to accidental but hilarious mistake that led most instances of "right" and "left" to be replaced by "centerright" and "centerleft", but also thanks to the unintentionally funny tone some scenes ended up having (due to the excessive Spanish soap opera drama quality). I'm not trying to be mocking when I say I had a lot of fun with it, even if I'm guessing this was not the author's intention!

(This is my brutally honest IMHO feedback, not trying to be mean to the creators!)

A work that tries to copy the structure of a film, but doesn't quite understand the decisions behind it to make said structure work and not come off as kitschy at times.

There's an inconsistency to the characters (if not the metaphor), that makes it hard to care about them. There's the didactic political mouthpieces and then the insubstantial characters, where ineffective jokes disrupt any meaningful attempt to try and commiserate with the abstracted struggle of politics recontextualized as an interpersonal drama.

If there were more effort to combine the two, or to make the propaganda moments more humanized, I think the two separate elements could have merged better together into something beautiful, but I don't give much headspace to realpolitik in any form, especially if the `human` element is purposefully left out.

The ending reflects the ambitious docudrama moment where all of the prior elements are reflected in the present day lens, the "where are they now" moment, but that requires more successful buildup to make it feel anything more than forced sentimentality. You have to care, and it's hard to care for props that feel like mouthpieces if they can't be sufficiently humanized.

Still, there's some lovely moments that really stand out above anything else in the presentation, like the peephole viewing. Those successful few jokes are the moments that really linger with the readers. There's a lot of real moments that likely resonate for the "local" reader, elements that get lost in translation but do otherwise give some verisimilitude to the underlying story. In spite of the walls of text of the legislation, one can really dive into an understanding of real world politics from years ago.

It's great to see a love letter for another medium, but sometimes one has to think extra about how to translate a narrative between two differently structured forms.

The presentation is impeccable, and it's especially impressive as something that was made by one person in half the month allowed. Not only is the art great, but everything comes together very seemlessly, it genuinely felt like watching an anime episode.

Tbh this is my main gripe with this entry. While it's incredibly polished and it wouldn't look out of place as a professionally made game, the story felt a bit too generically anime for me. It lacked that sort of viscerally intimite je ne sais quoi that I look for when I read indie FVNs. But that's more a matter of personal taste than it being a shortcoming of the VN.

On a more objective note, you can really tell the story awkwardly continues past its intended ending to deliver a little side story that does not feel as conclusive. I think it would have been better to have the side story be bonus content you can access from the menu once you complete the game, instead of the story just going on and diving into the mini episode without any kind of separation.

Final very small nitpick is that some of the backgrounds looked noticeably more low quality.

A short story that did exactly what it wanted to do and did it well. Whatever few hiccups there were didn't meaningfully detract from the work.

(Review originally written for MAY WOLF 2024)

The concept is pretty bold and a very difficult one to pull off in shortform – as a result of the therapy session being quite one-sided in its focus on a guy who basically doesn't exist, there are so, so many gaps you have to fill yourself to get invested in the present-day characters and their situation. It's also just a challenge to write therapy that feels specific, especially if it revolves around characters the reader has no prior familiarity with. A lot of the dialogue here feels general and interchangeable, like something any therapist could say to any patient dealing with vaguely similar problems.

I have to admit that it didn't really work for me on an emotional level; the ending just lacked context and finality to provoke a reaction other than "huh, I guess that's what happened". It also feels like the Itch page lays out the premise in much clearer terms than the story itself, and there might be a risk of confusion if you don't read it too closely.

On the art side, the character designs are fantastic, some of the best I've seen in the jam. They manage to both feel cohesive within the fictional world sketched by the story and purposeful in regard to the individuals wearing them, and all the details are just lovely to look at. While I wasn't able to engage with the transformation & journey of Jesper on a narrative level, the two outfits are so good they almost sold the development by themselves. Excellent work there.

How the game is put together feels less polished. I appreciate being able to see the entire designs, but the use of full sprites feels pretty weird, and the UI is both somewhat underdetailed and kind of messily made in general, showing pixel artifacts near the borders. The buttons are also often in danger of disappearing against the background. On the web side, it feels puzzling that the Itch page doesn't have any styling, since the game has a pretty well-defined aesthetic and a clear signature color scheme.

I respect ParaBEN as an experiment and am thankful for its excellent character designs, but unfortunately, the VN just didn't really grab me.

(Review originally written for MAY WOLF 2024)

Kind of difficult to get into. The writing lacks polish; the tense is inconsistent, and there's some room for tightening, with many simple actions being described quite thoroughly. What feels like the main event – the two characters interacting – is brief in comparison, and it's hard to get a sense of either as a character or their relationship. Visually, many of the photo backgrounds used are noticeably low-quality, and the extremely simplistic art style clashes with them.

The structure feels a bit disjointed – there's the mystery of what the protagonist experienced last night, then a flashback showing the truth basically unprompted, and no real conclusion that would connect the two parts. I honestly also just cannot make any sense of the explanation or what it's supposed to imply?

Being a part of some kind of larger project, the game feels basically impenetrable without further context. I wasn't really able to enjoy as a standalone thing. (No idea how the game jam's theme is supposed to factor in, either.)