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Alright, the final one I read from the three entries. I'm gonna go with The Awakened first and conclude with a comparison of all three.

THE AWAKENED

You must be tired of hearing people commenting on the no narration part. But here's what I thought caused the issue: the conversations are a bit artificial. Telling the story fully in first person perspective can work (heck I did that too), but it's tricky because you leave the burden of world-building through the lens of the MC.

The problem here in The Awekened is... you try to tell a lot through the conversation. I'm not saying you cannot slip in real issues like the healthcare system into the story. It's just that the delivery of the conversation is not natural. Instead of going "damn, that sucks, poor folks", I felt like it's not "the characters" who speak, but it's the writer instead; sometimes to the point I felt the topic of convo was a lecture instead. Consequentially, there was not enough breathing room for the characters to truly embrace their emotions and let the readers soak them in, resulting in the pacing to suffer. We need time to build relationships with the characters, and when they act unnatural, it's a bit difficult to establish it. My suggestion is to imagine the scenes like they are for movies. If you're upset the characters in the movies not speaking humanely enough, then you know there are issues.

Another gripe I have is the choice of music. Sure the presence of audio can enhance the experience, but for me personally, the music used did not help to build up what was going on in the story.


OVERALL

Out of all 3 entries, I have to say the best one is Replay Video. It's a bit ironic since that's the last one that came into your mind and you had a couple of days to wrap it, but it's the best one. The reason is, the story is solid. You know exactly how the story starts, how it ends, and what you want to tell behind it. Perhaps it's somewhat affected by the fact that the concept of Replay Video was visualized in your dream. As a result, all of the presentations were purposeful. There were not many bloated or unnecessary lines, except for the scene with the dragon. I felt like you felt the pressure to explain everything through that scene to make things as logical as possible for the readers, going as far into the little details. Other than that scene, everything was good. The MC's inner dilemma is well delivered (albeit rushed at the end), and I could sympathize with him well. Some lines felt wooden but it's not that noticeable.

The second favorite is Worth More Than Words. Again, what makes it great is I can tell that you know well what story you want to tell. Most of the problems come from the execution but they are not that big of a deal. Lastly, The Awakened. I can't help but feel that the whole idea/concept of the story is a bit too big and you were too excited to produce the project, resulting in the issues I have mentioned earlier.

I have to say that you're doing a spectacular job in submitting three different entries all on your own! I hope this game jam can serve as a good experience, because I'm pretty sure the quality of your work improves as time goes by ^^

No problems with me on hearing the same issues; the criticism is entirely justified, and now that I realize what my main issues are, it can be rectified.  I haven't written anything in a REALLY long time (+20 years), so I'm incredibly out of practice.  

Out of the three, this was my least favorite too, and part of it was trying to write something so far out of my comfort zone.  I tried writing completely different stories, and for this one, I wanted to be absurd and cringey,  but I've concluded it's just not my style.  

I thought of each project as an experiment, and tried to incorporate different things into each, but writing without narration made it nearly impossible to give fluid exposition, and I even realized as I was writing.  

That was a handicap I shouldn't have even had in retrospect; I based using first person narritive on the time a teacher gave me a bad grade on a writing assignment.  She said I relied too much on narration in my writing and that I should avoid it, which I took quite literally afterward.  If I paid more attention while reading other vns it would be rather obvious it was okay, even expected to use.

To be honest, I was more concerned with I learning the mechanical aspect of making a vn and less on the story itself.  All the stories I wrote were basically my first drafts, much to their detriment, and written with nothing more than a vague idea of what I was doing.  

I had never used Ren'Py, or done any programming prior to the second week of May, so I focused most of my attention on learning how to do the basics, and learning how to draw layered sprites.  I've learned a lot from the game jam, which was my primary reason for entering it anyway 

Thanks again for the review!