itch.io

Great use of quick scenes that start in the extremely mundane, take a turn into the weird, then to the sinister, then to the horrible.  It flows really well, is extremely gripping, and has a decent bit of flavor in terms of what's going on in the world around Eddie and how people view him and his company.  Really liked it!

An excellent piece that does a great job of viscerally following the band of hunters and then placing the reader right into the clash of battle.  The quip at the beginning does well to establish the character's view of what makes a sentient being worthwhile that she thwarts in order to aid her vengence.  The ending slams home the idea that her vengence and disregard for other humans in order to have it has made her as bad as the monsters she sought.

Really good.  Liked the ongoing reveal that the demons they were destroying weren't mindless monstrosities but had a culture and artistry all their own.  The dissonance at the end for Cordelia is well done (and harrowing) and the dismissal of the idea that the Lust demons could have been doing something harmless and beautiful works to both justify why they are so blinded in this moment to the non-threat before them as well as get the reader thinking about the labeling of these creatures as "demons" at all.  It's a label that gives the sisters a free license to slaughter, but in this case is completely divorced from the malevolence that would actually make it reasonable.

The prose, imagery, and worldbuilding are really excellent here.  I think 1000 words is too short to fill in enough of the worldbuilding concepts to really anchor them all, but the attempt is still impressive.  I love the use of historical documents as directly quoted sources and like the contrast of a very personal, explanatory bit of history that is on the longer side and a short, profound statement that acts as the outro.  Would be cool to see more of this devloped beyond the tight limits of the jam!

Love to read me some saurians.  

A very good look at a human culture through the eyes of a predator.  I like that much of Redscale's violence is spurred on by confusion based in an extension of the principles of his own existence.  He was created as a weapon with Purpose, so it stands to reason that all the softscales are too.  Mistaking children screaming for sentries paints a great scene of terror.  The pondering bits scratch a nice "puzzle-solving" bit of the brain and the ending of simply killing something he doesn't understand without much thought beyond "damn these things are weird" is both harrowing and a great inverse of how presumably most humans would view Saurians.

A great concept in fleshing out ideas for the faction (and loved the notes at the end.)  The flow is a little rough, but I think on the second or third pass it clicks.  The idea of the Robots being "Uplifters" and having an entity (and perhaps more) within them questioning the tenets is pretty neat.  

The three wanna-be baddies are well established as lovable (albeit misguided) scamps right from the beginning who aren't reallly cut out for being being people.  Really fun story to read, it twists the prompt in a interesting way, and I love the idea of a group of ne'er-do-wells being so incompetent at being evil that they just become good.  

This does a very good job of being simple on its face while having quite a bit to unpack.  The Admiral attempting to understand the Great Message is unknowingly distorting it and, alas, certain through his distortion that he is properly translating it.  It seems he may do so again, fiddling with dials until he gets the messages that make the most sense through his lens of war.  

The concept is really good and I like the flip of the artuhrian legend.  It took a moment to connect the dots at the very end (the first line and the knight's view of silver as "sickening") but it looks like that was due to having to cut down a slightly longer version (which might be cool to post in the discord lore channel if you still have it once the jam is done.)  The lady being silver-eyed as well leads me to believe the question of "Are we the baddies?"  here is a personal one, of how much guilt the knight bears for being deceived into violence and how much can be blamed on demonic influence.  (Possibly too the Kingdom of Angels could have a "keep the war going eternally" thing where they purposefully guide regions towards demonic influence so they can quash it, and hence the Voices led the knight there; but the hints seem to lean towards the other theory.)

A very interesting entry that is delightful to read (if a tad confusing on first blush).  The alliteration helps pull the reader through it and the overall form works really well to stress a structure of thought that is partially legible to our own (assumed) sensibilities while still being somewhat alien and inscrutable.  I do like that it inverts the "Are we the baddies?" question from a entity doing things that are sociatally labeled "good" and having to question if the outcome and means are actually serving that "good" to looking at a society generally termed evil and rationalizing the way they live and why that would be better (in the narrator's mind at least) in their situation than the customs of other factions.

I probably don't want to share a drink with the narrator anytime soon though.

The first column of prose does a really good job establishing both the beauty of the spring day before the battle and the bard's way of seeing the word that is later sapped by viewing the carnage of battle.  The contrast works especially well.  And that last paragraph gives a very ominous feeling with an expectant boss who also just murdered a whole bunch of people.

Really liked the flow of this one!  The second paragraph (and onward) turning on its head the normally relatable trope of the hungry halfling into a greedy monster was great.  

The foreboding opening leads well into a scene that starts tender and then distorts harrowingly towards ideological indoctrination.  Very good deep-seated horror of what should be a loving relationship being twisted to serve dogma.  (And taken with the title...)

The worldbuilding at the front conveys a lot of texture to help flesh out the narrator and the Copperclaws in a quick, focused set of words.  The meat of the story does a wonderful job oscillating between the grimness of the situation Skittles is trying to undermine and the absurd humor of the monastic order.  I think it works especially well that the humor is non-diegetic, and that the silliness of monastic rats chanting "Holy Funk Hunk" is treated deadly serious within the universe.  These monks are zealots and the Copperclaws have struck a deal with a ratty devil.

Skittles' attempt to argue against the use of what is essentially a WMD manages an interesting complexity as it encompasses a broad-morality ("killing civilians is wrong") and a personal grievance ("these rats are our enemies").  Our little hero's noble sacrifice was well foreshadowed and the closing is very sweet.