So, ok, the presentation is admittedly quite sparse – there's no audio (discounting some sort of technological mishap on my end), the title screen is imageless, Hiram's name color is too dark, and some of the backgrounds work quite badly with the sprites in terms of perspective. When a story has such a strong sense of tone & style, it would be really nice for the visual and auditive aspects to reflect it as well. Although the writing feels very natural for the medium, there's really nothing making Maywolf Mysteries feel like it benefits from being a visual novel.
That being said, while information is not conveyed with perfect clarity all the time, the amazing script nails most of the crucial elements of the genre. The characters are memorable in their limited screentime and easy to get a grasp of, the in-story time limit makes the pacing feel sharp, and the solidly constructed mystery itself has a unique furry flair to it thanks to the, uh, mechanics. While the meta elements could have felt slightly tiresome with weaker execution, the wacky worldbuilding is just so much fun it's hard to care. Even the title strikes a perfect balance between descriptively literal and expressive.
Anyway, this might be on me here, but after forgetting to pay attention to the jam theme in particular, I'm not sure how it is supposed to be invoked. In any case, it feels like a missed opportunity not to do some meta stuff with it, considering the tone of the piece.
A quite unpolished game in general, but won me over with its sheer sense of fun.