As far as presentation goes, I liked this one a lot! The sprites are lovely and I do like how they have different poses instead of relying entirely on facial expressions. The music feels like something I've probably heard in other VNs before, but it was used very appropriately (although, considering music plays a small role in the story, I would have liked some diegetic music). I think my only two points of criticism are the complete lack of transitions and the textbox.

The lack of transitions feels purposeful and I'd say it mostly works, being so consistent throughout the game. However, I think scene transitions in particular suffer a bit from it. As for the textbox, while I appreciate the custom design, I didn't like how it is constantly changing color. It was a bit too obtrusive, without really helping me to tell who was speaking because I always ended up forgetting who is associated with which color (as an aside, there are a lot of mistakes where the wrong nametag is used,  but that's just expected game jam roughness).

As far as the story goes, I did like it in concept and I appreciate the ambition, however I must say I came out feeling very differently about the two routes. While on paper Felix was the most classic and least interesting of the two (being pretty much a straightforward romance story "he meets him"), I think the execution was pretty effective.

Roy's route, on the other hand, while on paper it drew me more (yes, delicious drama, gimme), felt a bit more rough to read through. The characters go through such a roller coaster of emotions in such a short amount of time that it left me disoriented. During my playthrough, the protagonist inner narration was very inconsistent about describing Roy, in a way that did not feel intentional or natural. I am guessing this might be in part due to having part of the story shaped by the player's choices. And Roy, while not unbelievable as a person on paper, ended up feeling a bit cartoonish in such a fast paced story. Finally, some of the dialogues felt a bit dizzying to follow, with the constant change of topic.

Overall, I liked it, but I kind of wish I could see an implementation that allowed for a bit more breathing room!

A good entry with ambition.

Fantastic sprites. It's a lovely art style. That includes the UI as well. It's sleek and pleasing. The routes give a lot of player choice, and that's a fairly unique feature these days. Especially so for something done in such a small window of time. And I do applaud you for including a route that deviates so heavily from the normal Protagonist x Wolf dynamic.

Truly, there's lots of interesting choices there, but I found myself unable to fully sink into the world that was being built. The character relationships just didn't click for me. Maybe because the pacing felt off. Maybe because the story was edging toward low-conflict slice-of-life which I am, personally, not a fan of.

And, although I hate to point it out, there were a lot of tense errors and awkward phrases. I don't usually like to comment on those things because they can be easily corrected, but it did get intrusive enough to take me out of the story on multiple occasions.

All in all, an entry with good foundations and brimming with promise. I don't think it stuck the landing for me, however.

The Novel is well written, the narration was very smooth and I love the work and dedication spent on the graphic assets of the game. They both combine greatly, good job!

So...your VN is next in my list. So...24th VN I will read and rate from this jam, here we go!

Edit 1: Ok, I have just finished reading Roy's route. The relationship dynamics were portrayed in such a way it felt ... idk how to say it ... real? Presentation was nice. Story was a creative subversion of the May Wolf trope.

Those are my thoughts on this VN. Thanks for the experience!

This was an ambitious one, but that ultimately harms it quite a bit. There’s too much that the game wants to go through, but what it ended up as really is insufficient. The story that IS there is nice enough but everything goes by so quickly the reader won’t get the full glass of the inherent melancholy present in this set up. It really is impressive that all this paths are in a game jam project, but them individually leave something to be desired

A sweet story with excellent characterization, a unique approach to routes, and a story that feels meaningful.

Both routes were well written, with Roy's route being painful and Felix's being a sweet dance of putting yourself out there.

I liked it a lot! It's well written, and it was awesome to have another route unlocked after the first playthrough.

It was very comforting to go through Felix's route after finishing the frustrating route with roy! xD 

Congratulations again, to both of you guys! 

I was quite impressed with the spritework in this one!  Also, this is the first game from the jam so far that had multiple routes.  

I do find it the MC's attitude believable toward Roy. People who have been in bad relationships for as long as they have can act against logic and reason in ways that make no sense to others.  

My only criticism is the MC seems too aware of how toxic the situation is, even in private.  I could even see him going along with what his sister says, just while she's around, just to get her to stop talking about him.

I would like to see something that the MC would, in his situation blindness, interpret as good or caring that his sister would immediately be able to see through as selfish or controlling.

I also like how the second route incorporates the transmitter that was originally intended to impress the other wolf.

The epilogue was also very nicely done, and covers the lingering questions.

The production values are impressive for a game jam project – the sprites are plentiful and detailed, music & background images suit the story, and the fully custom UI is a nice touch. The prose feels good to read, too, with the English version repeating words sometimes being the biggest nitpick I can point out. (I particularly appreciate having the option to change the language right in the title screen, since God's silliest game engine Ren'py just hides it in the settings by default...)

The plot feels meaty but never overstuffed; there are a lot of scenes, characters, and locations, but everything serves its purpose. The jam theme is interpreted creatively, although you could grumble about the game not really engaging with the image itself that much. Still, it's just a very solid piece of writing, competently put together on a technical level and constantly enjoyable to read.

I think the biggest question mark is Roy just being so, so, unlikeable from the first time you meet him. It makes TUNING OUT read almost as an anti-narrative subversion of its classic VN premise – you hang out with the manipulative bad boy childhood friend, an archetypical character on several counts, and keep waiting for that moment when he gets complexity or some kind of explanation... and it just never comes. Even the most straightforward interrogation of why the protagonist is so into him only happens close to the end of the other route. I get the idea and enjoy the story a lot overall, but Roy's stuff does feel more compelling as an intellectual exercise in genre deconstruction than a dramatic narrative – it makes the point early and doesn't really elaborate on or complicate it in what follows.

(Fair warning: the game gets pretty labyrinthine with its choices, and I'm pretty sure I completed both main routes, but I can't say if I missed anything crucial!)

Spoilers:

Theme: The theme seems to be some mix of expanding the range of the radio & expanding the mindset, I presume?

Story: Hmm. Some nice prose overall. I think you had a good sense for the story you wanted to tell, and the beats rang true to it.

The thing where I waffled about on was Roy failing to have any performative niceness, even in public. In private sure, he's the asshole. Holden's already some sort of "Battered" so he can't quite defend himself, but in public I would have thought there'd be the pretense of being caring, to keep up the masquerade. 

It was also nice that you had the explanation of why Holden even fell into him, because Abbey denoted that he's been shitty all along.

I did squee at the flash forward ending, but it's also very 'perfect' that they married each other. I almost think it would have been nicer if they weren't dating but were best friends. It kinda feeds into the like, "you needed to rebound into someone good" sort of tropey archetype, if that makes sense? "The one person you meet after getting away from your shitty ex is perfect". So much overlapping interests.

Presentation: There were some artifacts in the English version (abbey "interjecting" into roy and holden's text convo, words too large for one of the menus, the untranslated french notes that I wasn't sure what they represented, the silent bits (I don't know if they had to be music, but I think some sort of ambient noise would have been nice).  I appreciated the custom gui efforts though, and the sprites were nice.

Creativity: While I liked your approach to the relationships, and the implementation of the open romance tracking, it also did feel like these were narrative grounds I've tread, especially in this space.

Overall thoughts:  I keep finagling with the points for your ranking, and I think that's a reflection of me having difficulty because you did so well and I'm perhaps nitpicking somethings... which means I should round up, tbh. Good job!

Just finished both routes and boy it's great. Slick UI, gorgeous sprites, 10/10 would date Felix. The writing department of Tuning Out is strong, perhaps one of the best among the jam entries I have read so far. You can tell the dev put extra effort into refining the style of descriptive storytelling.

SPOILER WARNING, you have been warned.

I like how wildly different the two routes were yet they both captured the character growth of Holden in equally meaningful ways. One is through an even messed up, toxic situation, one is through a better newfound companionship. While Felix's route was a sweet read, I think I like Roy's route better because the portrayal of the MC being helplessly indecisive, self-loathing, etc. was well captured. The way Roy treated Holden made me very uncomfortable, it was a refreshing breath of air to be able to tell him to fuck off at the end. Props to you for evoking such emotions for the readers to swallow.

Moving on to the point systems. At first, I completely disliked it, especially in Roy's route: "Why do I get a minus for Roy?" "Wait now Holden too?" "What is the right choice???". And then jumping into Felix's route, everything was much more simple. I don't know if it was the intention, but at the end of gameplay, I found the juxtaposition kinda fits and reflected Holden's state of mind.

On the more technical aspects, one of the weaknesses of a long descriptive narrative is that you have to keep the interest of readers. Personally, I think there were some scenes where the lack of audio made the silence deafening (like in the abandoned warehouse). Another thing to note is pauses between scenes. It's simple, but transitioning from one scene to another that's supposed to have a big time gap without a proper pause in between felt a bit off. Speaking of transition, a simple dissolve (or any other transition) between backgrounds would make the presentation more seamless.

On yet another more technical aspect (this is me being really nitpicky), I think the text did not contrast very well with some backgrounds. I would consider raising the opacity of the dialogue box just a bit. One of the backgrounds of the city was a picture of nighttime, making me "Wait it's night already? Oh no it's still the afternoon."

Also, I think it's a mistake that slipped through. Just before the first choice, while Holden was talking with Roy, there was suddenly a line of dialogue spoken by Abby (?)

Overall Tuning Out is a well-crafted story about getting out of a toxic relationship and growing past it. Beautifully done!

Let's goo Nabot and Dana !!

A promising visual novel, very fun to play with many routes and options. The writing is awesome, and the sprites are gorgeous. I had a lot of fun playing it, good job Dana and Nabot!!