This is the epitome of NovemBEAR in a good way.  As someone who lives in rural Appalachia, there were so many quirks that grounded the story locally, and family dynamics that were so tangible and familiar, it came alive for me.  Of course, the writing and visuals are excellent, as is to be expected.  

Seeing the juxtaposition of the detectives and the family reminds me personally of what it was like working at a local newspaper.  I experienced the detached, emotionless version of  events as news at work, then being at home or out in the community, experiencing the actual impact the stories made on people's lives, and the emotions that come with it, being in a rural area was a disconcerting feeling at times, especially when death was involved.

I really enjoyed your vn; it was very creative to cram so many story endings in a single month project...   I've never seen such an ambitious attempt to do thar in a game jam. You took advantage of the alternate sprite options (and limitations!) in ways that worked well with the narrative that I never even considered.

(I wish I had done a better job drawing the community contributed sprites now after seeing them in action, but I'm glad you were willing to use them regardless. 😅 I'm still new at making layered sprites, so I treated them as experiments to figure out what I was doing, and have learned a lot in the process.)

There were a few minor spelling/grammer issues and a couple of places where I felt the pacing slowed just a bit, but it was executed extremely well, especially given the time limit.  Great job!

I was pleasantly surprised by this VN, as it leaned into the 3d/VR-esque models and created a really interesting premise. Unchecked/unregulated corporate interests, the things we would do for more time, and the social aspects of VR games are fun themes introduced, and I would love to see this concept continued.

Minimal art, overly complex-for-what-it-is prose, and a story that lost me very early on. 

I think this is a well crafted story, and you definitely hit the beats you wanted to, but I had a few gripes. 

I think this went on for too long. I get that it's trying to mirror reality, the indefinite waiting for a resolution, but in some aspects, it felt like on the cusp of sentimental. It would have been more impactful for the breakup if I was more invested in the bunny, but we were barely present in the scene with him at the first place. Jaime was already emotionally checked out (understandably so), and that didn't even seem like it was properly fully dating from the text, just that they'd fooled around.

There's a handful of other moments where I think you explain the emotional beats, and I think leaving more of an absence (not unlike the status throughout most of the story) would have let those beats grow. Some you reinforced with lovely language, but in those moments I was like "I get it, he's sad, Tom's gone" (and how could I not get it? That's the framework of the story).

I think tightening up what we're shown would make this punch even harder, and I do think there's a decent chunk of fat to trim in this short story... 

Which is to say, that's perhaps my other "gripe", in that it feels like the medium was circumvented with some cursory nods to what was expected of the medium with the heavy usage of NVL mode. It was fine and proper prose, good prose, but there are elements that I was like "this would be a great moment for a visual" like the last scene with the marchers out in the woods.

The work toed the line by showing that there was moments where the visuals were present, but by not having them more consistently spread throughout, that kind of frontloading felt like it was to change expectations? That one would get more CGs throughout, when I feel like the last one was at the football game. And they were very nice CGs, I know as someone who has commed him (and wasn't getting anything during this window while he worked for you T_T). It leaves it kind of off balance in the presentation, to me.

There was some weird tensing stuff in the mix of past and present but that's pretty trivial and was only worth mentioning as an FYI for revising concerns.

If this was letterboxd, I could give you the 4.5 this work deserves, but Itch is a fuck and believes in absolutes. I think you set out what you wanted to do, and it was a great job at that, but I think I could have crossed over into the depression threshold if we schmooved a bit faster (especially with some elements that were narratively repeated-- even if it makes sense for them to keep happening, the mom-dad dynamic was already authentically "abusive" enough to make it seem credible that Tom was that person on that forum at that point in the narrative).

And perhaps this is nitpicking in a way, but that's because you did such a fantastic job that these items sort of stand out to me. You did eat, in spite of whatever my comment/rating says :p

Review in jam comments: https://itch.io/post/11605445

What He Carried toys with some interesting ideas about grief, self-perception and how we let ourselves be treated by others, but with a very sloppy execution. The presentation of the story being a """Love interest""" trauma-dumping on a very passive MC makes for a pretty uncomfortable experience that makes the reader wonder why is he sitting there and taking it. At the same time, the characters appear cognizant of the strangeness of the situation and make attempts to lampshade it, which gives off vibes of a lack of commitment to its "bit;" what we do see of the bear's life is often curbed by this unsure nature. The artwork, though excellent, also seems a little off, defining characters much different than what we do get to see in the story proper. WHC is uneven and strange but short enough to be worth the couple of minutes it asks of you.