Considering this part of a trio of May Wolf submissions, I can't help to compare Worth More Than Words to the other two entries by the same dev. I think I can safely say this was my least favorite (which, considering this was the first one they wrote, is a good sign, it shows their growth!).

First of all, I must say that while the VN has some good art, Josiah and Winston are somewhere in the uncanny valley for me? Mainly because of their big eyes staring directly at the reader. The sprites staring at the reader while talking at each other do not work in WMTW, while it sort of worked for me in The Awakened.

Timothy, on the other hand, looks cute, I think he incapsulates the idea of aged wolf pretty well!

SPOILERS to follow.

The core of the story, the part where Timothyr rambles about his youth, sort of works for me. You can tell this story comes from a real place, the music is nice, and the very long monologue sells the idea of an old person rambling. Despite that, it kinds get tiring and monotonous after a while. I really wish there had been some more interjections by the son and some more physicality in the scene. Both the title and the way the story is handled seem to point to the relationship between the dad and his sister being the emotional core of the story, but that never really materializes. I think it's significant that the father shares this experience, but the real emotional core of the story, the one we get to actually experience, is the relationship between the father and his son, in all its complexity. I wish it had been developed a bit more by making the son a more active presence.

Aside from this singular scene (that eats most of the VN's wordcount) everything else doesn't really work for me. The framing device with Josiah and Winston doesn't really do much (except telling us how the story with the dad ends, which could have been shown in a more interesting manner). The vignette with Timothy and his sister is shown at the beginning, where it has no context, and then has to be awkwardly repeated a second time with context in order for the emotional beat to land. And the random frontal pics after the end of the story really clash with its tone.

I haven't read PRESSED, so my opinions may not be completely validating here, but I'd like to give my two cents on this story as a stand alone VN, and I hope I don't come across as too harsh.

Personally, I struggled to really follow every single thing the father was saying to us (as the MC) throughout his very long monologue, but that's something that can be passed as being based on real-life old people rambling on, hah. However, I also struggled to really empathize with him; it sort of felt like you were thinking "How can I make him as dirt poor as possible?" and came up with his backstory. It all just felt like a bit too much, almost comically tragic.

Lastly, as some have also pointed out, the ending is out of left field with a very unnecessary sort-of sex scene. I think if you wanted to make a soulful, mellow story, you should've stuck to your guns and kept it like that til the end!

All this being said, I'm still very impressed on how quickly you were able to work on this VN, and your writing is very solid. I think a healthy balance between monologue, dialouge and narration would really help boost it to being very good! Congrats and good job :]

Solid simple premise delivered beautifully. The story feels a little close to home. My grandma is a lovely woman who came from a very poor family. She likes to tell me how her childhood used to be. How she and her siblings had to work hard, eat whatever they had on the table, etc. Always feels like a lecture session, but it never bores me because she's always so passionate about telling me her stories. And that's what I like about WMTW. The father lecturing his son all the way felt grounded and authentic, making the scene very sentimental. But, this is a visual novel. I'm afraid that scene was "too much telling, less showing." The scene between the siblings (albeit short) was sweet, arguably the most visually appealing part, I wish there were more like this part.

On the technical side, I love how you contrast the art style between the past and the present. However, I personally like your 2D style better. The 3D style felt a bit off, perhaps because my brain expects 3D objects to interact with each other, having depth of field and lighting interactions between them. But this is a purely subjective preference.

The animation for the main menu looks appealing and communicates well what the readers could expect from the story. A little tip: Ren'py can do frame-by-frame animation just fine, you don't need additional video editing tools at all.

Lastly, this is perhaps my biggest grip. I feel strongly conflicted about the NSFW part of the story. I don't think that part adds significant value to the storytelling. Instead, it retracts the mood that has been slowly built up. Perhaps you felt the urge to include it because you wanted to make the project fit within the boundary of the theme with that one line. Perhaps it's purely to showcase your main project.

Regardless, WMTM is a pleasing short read that hits its mark.

I really liked your entry and the short story/teaser that you told. The writing for Timothy's monologue especially hit me in the feels and I felt like your writing was really engaging during this section. My only problems that I have are that the writing felt a bit rushed between Winston and Josiah and the transitions were pretty abrupt. If Winston and Josiah's interactions were expanded on and more transition text or description was given, then that would help the flow of the narrative for me.

Oh, the intro section between Timothy and Maria was really amazing with all the sprite movements and the scene slowly gaining more detail, like a polaroid picture would. Also for the time that you were able to put this entry together, I think it turned out really well. I plan to check out PRESSED when I've got fewer May Wolves on the mind.

I played through the demo of PRESSED just in case before going through this VN. Hopefully I have not missed anything available that would show what happens in-between. I may have an emotional bias towards this side story, as I grow increasingly aware of the passage of time, and detachment from my own family. 

It felt real and raw, it was difficult to get through (in a good way). It is a good teaser for what is to come next, or chronologically before, for the PRESSED storyline. Maybe even some foreshadowing for Josiah and his own father? I'm very interested in reading more about Winston's family!

It was jarring for me to listen to Timothy’s backstory, presumably through Winston’s eyes, and have his sprite show up at the end. Timothy looks huge in comparison, but it could be said that the "runt" grew up to be the tallest after all.

Going back and forth in the story, I finally noticed the attention to detail in the time of day outside of the window and the lighting. A bit covered up by the size/presence of the character sprites and transitions, but a nice touch.

Spoilers ahead for anyone who hasn't read this yet.

Theme: I'm not seeing any explicit pertinence to "expansion", at least, with an authorial intent. I do understand that this is a side story to your main work, but I think it could stand to be more explicitly present in the focus, or that the lens shifts to still cover the same content but reframes it in a way more relevant to the narrative.

Story: I did quite enjoy your voices for your characters. They had verisimilitude. The flashback to the retelling did feel authentically one-sided. Even prior to death, the father can't help but overstep his boundaries with his son, monologuing at him instead of allowing for a dialog between the two.

Albeit, just because the action makes sense in character, doesn't mean that it was fully appealing. I would have enjoyed it more if we had further flashbacks like the start, instead of just being told w/o the corresponding visuals.

It was nice to have that sort of wizard of Oz element with the flashback as bookends to the piece, where originally it was in sepia, and then it was in color, although I don't think we needed like the exact language verbatim twice, given the shortness of the piece. We could have had it truncated a bit the second time around.

It was a narrative that knew what it wanted to do, but that sort of artificially constrained it to the limits of getting the information from the father, instead of trying to cultivate the dialogue between the father who has realized he's done wrong, and the son who doesn't even get a real chance for a word in edgewise.

I also thought it was very authentic how he passed away so quickly, and how he was told he can pass on. That reminded me of things my mother has said about her her own father's passing, so that resonated with me, even if only for my secondhand experience.

I didn't love the narrative swap over from the death to the ending though. Pacing-wise, even if we've had in week time, my reading time was much more immediate, and it felt a bit gauche to me.

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My own wonder that not everyone has: What does it mean for a wolf to have a lion's heart, in a world with anthropomorphic creatures? What does it mean to have farm animals when they're evidently... house animals?

Other bonus item: really enjoyed the quip about tying the knot in both senses. Wordplay yes!
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Presentation: I appreciate you making new sprites from scratch in spite of your main game's work, just for the purposes of the game jam (I understand that was the rules, but I think it should be acknowledged all the same).

What was strange of sorts was the positioning of the characters on the screen, at least, in the start. Were they sitting next to each other? Should one have been offscreen? The father's staring at the screen w/ the son mostly not present, does work for the narrative of "Father lecturing Son", but it doesn't work as much for me with "Couple speaking w/ one another".

I think you would have been better served to have one as a side-sprite and the other one screen, so that we're in that character's POV, instead of wondering whose POV we're in visually while being stared at by the characters.

As I eluded to prior, I would have liked more flashbacks to have their own corresponding visuals, and I found it curious that the flashback was in a different art style than the main work. You played with that presentation not only in terms of the filter (sepia) but style, which gave it a more... disney? carton vibe, if that makes sense? I'm not the biggest art person so someone else may actively speak up and say otherwise.

A minor issue I had was you said the father's nose was crooked, but it didn't look crooked. In a related vein, I liked the father's eyes more than the sons-- they felt kind of like doll eyes, whereas his felt more "alive?". And was the father's angry sprite the same as his flushed sprite, as it seemed to have been used for both purposes?

Creativity: Again, I liked your wizard of OZ moment, and the "father on the chair monologuing" was very Moral Oral and other similar works with that perspective. With it feeling like it was tied to your main work, that may have created some narrative constraints that you couldn't quite escape.

You did your own music, and that felt appropriate for the scenes. Well done.

Overall thoughts: Welcome to the fvn scene! hope this commentary doesn't come off too poorly. You're certainly a workhorse for putting three game jam entries in of sizable lengths all as solo projects (and one on the last day!).

I think this one could have come off stronger with some more polish, like additional scenes in the flashbacks to go along with the dialog, given we did already get a decent amount of depth to those remembered narratives.

I still did quite enjoy the character's voices, and I know one of my concurrent watchers was invested in taking a look at your main project through these works, so I hope you can get more attention there as well.

Narratively, due to it all being a sort of monologue like in a theater production, the narrative has to do a lot more work (while on the stage for a one man show the visuals may be more minimalistic, the medium here needs more visuals to work with because they don't have the gravitas of the live performer). 

Anyway, congrats on your May Wolf, and you'll see me again as I continue going through the game jams because... you did three! Powerful.