Unfortunately I’m definitely not into VNs, joking about myself that I can just sit down and read a dictionary, but not a regular literature. I’ve had to take 2 rounds trying hard not to skip every text :D So in the rating I tried hard to “better rate more than accidentally less”.

Apart from that - I really love the artstyle. (Should I mention Capybara? Missed her the first time, wanted to complain :D but found in the second run where I was deliberately choosing the wrong options).

As for the story - that’s pretty good for a game jam, but speaking of a full game here - I see two issues: first it doesn’t hook the reader with action early. Intro sequence might even be moved somewhere further into the game, as a flashback, it’s just not exciting enough for a hook. “Get to the point, and get there fast”, I guess that’s a good rule for making games, especially lewd ones.

Second issue - slightly connected to the first one - the first part of the story (aka the whole jam game) doesn’t make me care for the characters.

In other words let’s imagine you’ve hooked me up with Monkey and Hoppy fighting, ending up both in the river and having to sit and talk it off nude until their clothes dry. That still doesn’t get me involved with the characters. This just gives me a push “this game could be fun, not just an endless flow of text!” but I still don’t care who they are (art is great though!). There are writing tricks to make the reader care about the characters, but it’s hard and might backfire - what can work is a small mini-game to “help them”. This is not a panacea, but will “get the player involved into their relations” - could be them settling the conflict, now without fists, but with a game of checkers with no matter who wins they actually both end up enjoying the game. Another option could be a spicy narration of what Monkey thinks about nudity. Practical, aesthetic, social. Not about potatoes :)

I could give Witcher as an example - listened to a short snipped of an audiobook recently: starts with really juicy description of a monster (enough to hook me, at least from linguistic point of view :D), then this monster hunts target (building tension), then Witcher jumps in and kills the monster (action!) and then the story goes about boring bureaucracy and trash human relations - if they’d started with that piece, I’d have closed the video in less than half a minute and switched to a different one.

And in the end… Ok, it got explained why pants were necessary, but why tops? ;)