Fantastic presentation, trying to make optimal use of the new features of the latest renpy release and taking care to feature essentially the capacity that many devs ignore.
While the relationship of the couple feels authentic, the worldbuilding and ham-fisted lampshading of the "My Wolf" genre makes everything feel insincere and makes world itself strange and feeling unfinished. The worldbuilding sets up a lot of implications, but they're carried out to shallow ends, making it feel dissatisfying at times, hamstringing the quality emotional core and authentic interpersonal drama.
It's got a lovely core, but the need to bring in the audience with the overt genre jokes takes away from the sincerity of the piece, undermining the story and the themes within it.
Love everything about this – the tight but purposeful pacing, the careful setups and payoffs, the occasional deadpan humor. The animations and the cross-cutting give the game a nice cinematic feel, which it uses effectively both to get across its intriguing worldbuilding and to build its atmosphere of desolate beauty.
The VN's most important assets are its fantastic instincts for what to reveal and what to keep ambiguous. In spite of the game jam's prompt, it doesn't get bogged down by the romance, confidently keeping its character portraits interesting but vague outlines and making its slower moments count thematically. It's not the shortest game in the jam, but out of what I have read so far, it may be the best at making every word matter.
I'm blown away by what The Flying General accomplished in around 8000 words and with mostly premade assets, sketching out a fascinating world and establishing a clear visual identity for itself, and I hope it gets lots of love as people go through the jam entries. (There are some polish issues, most notably the audio mixing, but I'm just excited to play it again once they are addressed.)
