There is much to love about The Blue Cloth and plenty of talent and effort that went into its creation. While there is plenty to appreciate about the visuals and the writing, I am especially stunned by the audio design. Aside from the dev's other main project, The Blue Cloth is the only FVN I can think of that where the dev played with multiple audio channels, mixing tracks and making sure some audio cues play precisely at story-appropriate moments.

I am especially the way music sometimes blends together with a constant bug buzzing sound, which effectively conveys how atrocious camping in nature can be.

The Blue Cloth is very good at setting mood in general, I find the story's most introspective moments are the most effective. The premise is simple, appropriately small for a short story (focusing on one tract of a journey), and captivating (the interpersonal conflict and lack of communication between the main characters is great conflict!).

Unfortunately, while everything is aligned right for a great short story, I did not enjoy the overall narrative, which I feel quickly loses focus of the story it's trying (or should?) be telling. On a small scale, I think this quickly becomes evident by the way the story is consistently getting distracted by its worldbuilding - misusing dialogue especially to deliver exposition instead of actually exploring and developing the characters' relationships.

On a more fundamental note, I think the attempt to explore multiple character's points of view prevents the story from developing one of them in a way that feels satisfying. The best way I can summarize how I feel is that Levis seems to get all the setup and no payoff, Alfrin gets the payoff and no setup, and Kal is there being like "Hey, I'm here too!" but nobody cares.

Much of the problem I have with The Blue Cloth seems to stem from the fact that the dev was trying to cut out a complete short story from a larger pre-existing larger story they wanted to tell. When conversing with the author, they managed to lay out what the bigger picture was supposed to be about with such clarity and simplicity that immediately left me wanting for more! Unfortunately, while I appreciate the talent that went into making The Blue Cloth (and I am a big fan of Eymon's other works!), I think much more tinkering would have been required for this short story to stand on its own, and not as a part of a larger story.