🧌  LOUDO

Let's start by explaining what we are doing here. We want to do a post-mortem for Curtains Call (the jam version at least), but since this year we are in a team, we thought we'd do it in the style of an unscripted conversation between me and Kerche, instead of going for the more traditional approach. So I guess that topic is a nice ice-breaker... How different was it for you working in a team, compared to your previous May Wolf works?

🐆 KERCHE

So I guess that topic is a nice ice-breaker... How different was it for you working in a team, compared to your previous May Wolf works?

This was my first work where I had a co-producer (co-maker?) in an FVN. I think the biggest difference is that it was a lot less stressful than my solo ventures, as I can happily report I had a grand total of zero (jam induced) menty Bs during this May. Who would have thought that actually getting help and sharing the workload makes making an FVN in a month a lot more manageable?

The other big difference is that I was focusing on art only, which meant I couldn't do my usual song and dance of switching between drawing and writing when I'm not in the mood for one or the other. I somewhat mitigated that by switching between focusing on different characters and CGs.

Lastly, not being the lead creative director was a completely new perspective. I think we went in with different expectations on level of authorial control, but we met in the middle in the end. I went into this with a pretty servile mindset, expecting clear instructions and little wiggle room for creative freedom, while your directions as the lead were mostly "you got this pookie", providing a lot of helpful references and moodboards which I proceeded to ignore, and a lot more asking for my opinions and brainstorming sessions than I initially expected.

I like to think that our ideas bounced really nice off each other and that we managed to steer both the storytelling and visuals in the right direction. I must also thank you for taking the flack when it comes to some of the more... controversial storytelling decisions. The public doesn't know I was the evil chancellor whispering corrupting words into the ear of the king in this case.

Buuuuut we can open that can of worms a bit later. How was YOUR experience in this jam? You worked as both a solo dev and as a writer with the help of an artist before. What were your experiences with our creative feedback and communication?

🧌  LOUDO

"as I can happily report I had a grand total of zero (jam induced) menty Bs during this May." This is so interesting to hear, by the way, because while I think working in a team is much more enjoyable and rewarding, I generally find it more stressful! Especially for game jams because the whole time I'm thinking "If I fail to deliver, I'll be bringing my partner down with me". That can be a powerful motivator, but it's also very stressful.

You are right that this was not my first time working with someone else, but I must admit that in some way this felt like my first time working in a team. For May Wolf 2023, Hugh generously offered to make a few art assets for The Flying General, but that happened towards the end of May, when The Flying General was well underway and the story finalized. And I have commissioned some artists for projects of mine, still stuck in development hell...

So, up until now, it always felt I was working with people who were generously helping me to make my own game. This was different for Curtains Call, which felt very much like both of our baby... Not sure if you feel the same way, considering I'm sure you found out about some of my creative decisions only when you played the published version. I guess this is as good a time as any to mention that we frantically worked on this project until 5.30 am of the final day (the deadline was at 6.00 am our time).

One thing that is always true though is that I tend to trust my artist's vision, especially when it comes to character designs. I have a lot more fun with stuff like scene composition and so on, but when it comes to designs I'm more than glad that you took charge. I think the only thing I gave you negative feedback on was Crni's first costume (which I think ended up being Belfort's, didn't it?).

I think it worked quite similarly with the writing. While I felt fully in charge of that, it was immensely helpful to be able to bounce ideas off you! Even beyond your more direct forms of feedback, I remember when I approached you my premise was little more than "I want to write a story about theater (with the spotlight being the titular light in the dark) where boundaries between real and fiction are malleable." It was only when you shared some concepts with me that the idea that the play would focus on romancing a monster came to life! Next thing I knew, I was watching romance slop movies intended for women to get me into the right mindset...

Anything you would have done differently? Tell us about your inspirations for the designs (especially a certain wolf)... 

🐆 KERCHE

I must admit, I was also painfully aware that this time the consequences for failing wouldn't be just a disappointed sigh from Unagi, but dragging another person down with me. Surprisingly, this didn't cause me much stress? I would expect it would, but it was more of an inspiring pressure.

I do agree that this felt more like a collab where we had a pretty egalitarian share of creative control. I was relatively in the dark for the majority of May since I did not see the very rough manuscript until the 30th of May. Despite of that, we did talk a lot about the plot beats, structure, characters, visual framing etc... I guess it felt like seeing a blurry vision of the final game in the distance, or only pieces of the puzzle. Everything clicked into place and I saw the vision once the public build dropped and we played it together a few days after recovering from passing the fuck out from exhaustion. It seems like screaming together in panic at 5am on the 31th of May has become an annual tradition at this point!

I did have fun making the designs and outfits, even though I finally realised character design isn't something I have a natural inclination for? I just make them a plain greyish animal with some detail or flair and call it a day! Designing the fantasy costumes put me outside of my comfort zone. I ended up looking at A LOT of photos and catalogues (especially dresses), trying to draw elaborate costumes and slowly simplifying them cause I didn't have the skill and time to figure them out.

It's interesting how with Bela's everyday design and with Crni's fantasy design we had opposite ideas. I went in expecting that the fox is already a hot femboy twink comfortable with wearing dresses, and this theatre play would be just another day of him serving at the slay factory. Course correcting him into JUST A GUY was pretty easy.

With Crni's fantastical outfit, I initially had an idea of a noble demon, initially giving him a cavalry uniform. Unfortunately I'm not a furry with a military uniform kink, so I just picked one whose looks and vibes I liked the most. You had an idea for more of a nature themed wild, savage demon. The final very hasty compromise was a bizarre mishmash of me throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks.

I had grand plans with wanting to have his armour rusted, reclaimed by moss and lichen, and with vines tangled up in some of the crevices. A lot of very hasty decisions were made cause I kept fiddling with his outfit until basically the lats day, which is why he's so messy. One very random detail I'm pretty happy with is the very ad hoc decision to add a conspicuous bullet hole in his chest plate. I always liked demons or any other supernatural entities having some morbid elements of the undead revenant. Maybe his body has risen back to life even after a fatal shot, or maybe he has simply pilfered it from a fallen enemy.

Belfort's costume I'm pretty happy with (except the pants, no idea what I was cooking there), but it is a DIFFERENT foppish coat that is somewhat similar but of a very different functionality compared to the initial military jacket the wolf demon initially had.

I am very happy that you found my writing helpful! I think our communication was overall pretty good, but I had a feeling we were at a Mexican standoff a few times, both waiting for the other to spring to action first. I was expecting a more concrete manuscript with details I could illustrate without discrepancies, and you were waiting for some visuals so you could write them down.

 I remember you told me you didn't really have a clear idea of the characters and their voices at some point. I told you what was my impression of them based on your rough outline of their characters. I hope my feedback there helped, since your initial directions helped me paint a very clear image of the characters in my head (wish some course steering needed at times).

The idea of Crni being a too cool for school bad boy who's actually a big goofball softie came immediately from you dropping even the smallest details like "oh yeah I'll need a scene of him smoking". The fact that he's a ram came from the idea that he's a sheep in wolf's clothing, but also from the idea that the moment I thought of a demonic wolf, I saw demonic horns a la Baphomet. The discussion about the fox being typecast and suffering from impostor syndrome lead to the natural connection that the ram is being typecast too, and that they're both outsiders in this weird canine-only play.

Also you have only barely dipped your toes into the wonderful and terrifying world of monsterfucker slop for teratophiliacs paranomal romance marketed for women. How much do you think this affected your storytelling and stylistic decisions during writing? Your other two VNs both had romance, but with a very much more gay men dynamic (bara anime shirts simultaneously exploding during a confession of love, and freaky boys dropping 5 BDSM kinks per second implicitly and explicitly). You said you tried to get more in the mindset of writing something where romance takes a much bigger focus, and has a style more like in those straight romances I tortured you with. Next we'll know, you'll be writing one of those airport books that have a pair of abs on the cover.

🧌  LOUDO

I think you did a great job with the character designs! Thinking back, I gave you so much freedom with the designs that I didn't even give you a species for them. Pretty much my only notes about the characters' species were: 1) the MC gets typecast because of his species; 2) the titular "my wolf" is not actually a wolf but plays one in the play; 3) the rival is some kind of canine species (for plot reasons). As a writer, I was more interested in the roles the characters play in the story, so my concern was letting you draw whatever felt more comfortable to you. All of the designs were very inspired!

And I guess I was relieved in a wray that you were not much better at managing your time than I was. I was expecting you'd be done more quickly than me and I would be the one to drag my feet; instead, we entered the final day of the jam with you still working on the sprites and telling me to just use placeholders for coding purposes... And you were (allegedly) still redesigning Crni's costume on the 31st! I love his demon sprite, though I must admit I did not understand the black spot was supposed to be a hole in his armor until you told me just now! I guess it'll become clearer when we release the final graphics for the game, but since you described him dressing as a samurai I interpreted him as wearing robes, and the black spot was maybe a black feather (to contrast the leaves in his cape).

I must admit I struggled more than I expected at first to get past my writer's block because the concept I had laid out proved more challenging than I had anticipated. First of all, I need to write two narratives at once, and while I had a clear picture of what I wanted to do with the story "outside the play", I started the month having no idea of what the play would be about and slowly getting to a clearer picture over the course of the month. That was the part I kept pestering you about "If you have some nice ideas, just throw them at me".

The other thing I struggled with at first was definitely the characters. Again, I hadn't fully realized it when I started out sketching the story, but the number of characters to juggle proved to be deceptively large. The premise of the story required that almost all people are actually two characters (the actor and the role they are playing), and I wanted them to be distinctive enough in their own right. For example, the arctic fox boy is much more introverted and reserved than the more confrontational princess. While I did end up cutting some corners (the three brothers' actors barely appear in the jam version of the game), I am pretty satisfied with how they ended up and I feel like I have a very good grasp of who they are as people now.

Your thoughts on the characters were definitely useful, though to be honest, you just telling me "you got this pookie" was often help enough LOL. The characters that I was struggling the most with were the three brothers, and I guess the reader's feedback clocked that, but even though they are still underbaked, I think I did manage to find their voices, which is what I was struggling the most with. For example, Basil ended up being the skeptic of the group: we see him most of the time challenging Belfort's plans and statements. I intentionally didn't want to waste precious wordcount on establishing why they are called the Strong, the Brave, and the Smart. My idea was that everyone would be already familiar with these archetypes (especially within the world of the story, where The Sinking Tower is a well-known work). A big theme that will be explored more thoroughly in the rest of the story is that what we are witnessing is not the play, but a specific rendition of the play. 

One thing I'm not as happy with my writing is that I feel like I'm not as comfortable writing group conversations. I feel most at home writing conversations that involve just two people. This was a perfect opportunity to get out of my comfort zone in the scenes with the three brothers, but the end result was mixed because I made Brutus not much of a talker. I'm planning to challenge myself more when writing the rest of the story.

As for the monsterfucker slop, I've always had the impression that romance written for women has a different vibe than romance written for gay men and I was consciously trying to emulate that when writing Curtains Call. I wanted the romance between the princess and the demon to feel like a straight romance, not just because it involves two straight people but because it uses tropes of that genre. At the same time, I wanted the romance between the arctic fox and the ram to feel like a gay romance. The reader will decide how much I've succeeded at that, but that was part of the fun of the exercise. When I wrote the summary of the game as "romance slop for him and for her", it's because that was the mindset I had while writing it! It felt very rewarding when one of our friends commented while streaming the game "Is this one of those white woman x Arabian man porn books?" I will vehemently reject any such allegations (sweats), while at the same time confirming that pulpy romance was a big source of inspiration.

On the topic of our earlier works, I think all of our May Wolves, including your previous works, have a big stylistic thing in common, which is our brand of sense of humor. It's probably less pronounced in Mithridatium as opposed to your more recent Terminated, but even when I read the former I remember wondering "What does he mean with 'you, the girl reading this'...?"

🐆 KERCHE

I'm glad that you find the designs inspired! The audiences thought so too, so I'm really happy. Also I'll take SOME offence to the time management comment. I did take pretty consistently through the whole month, buuuut... I did manage to draw some sprites with very little issue, like the fox and the husky ones. The rest I struggled with at least somewhat, and with Crni (especially his wolf form) I was fighting for my life. I found it so funny, but I also think they kinda are right, when we received a review saying the expressions are spot on and full of character... I did the fox's character early and as an idea of what kind of expressions we'd like. Then I proceeded to smooth it with sandpaper until he became a little bit uncanny, which accidentally works for the "I am disassociating as life happens to me" vibe I'm getting from both the fox and the princess. The rest of the characters got a default expression only for a long time, and the rest hastily added during the last weekend just before the deadline. I had this big IQ plan where I'd just give you the base sprites, bully you into coding them and then send you the expressions to do a quick easy copy paste and replace which would magically make everything suddenly work perfectly. Shockingly... it worked. Well, mostly. Pro tip for any aspiring developers out there: don't do this if you're like me and sometimes paint the head/neck behind and sometimes the lush neckfluff in front of the body layer. Don't look too hard at poor Basil's neck...

I must also admit I was worried when you told me you're struggling with the characters, writer's block and were mostly quietly poking and prodding without giving me a magical manuscript or draft I was eagerly expecting. I feel like the last week or so of the jam we both locked the fuck in and I can only describe this late time burst of productivity as euphoric panic.

As for the bloated cast of characters, it truly is larger than it seems initially. I mostly had to think about the same number of characters in alternate costumes, but you had to carefully write everyone as two personalities. When we discussed the difference between the play characters and actors, I found the entire idea very fun and am hoping the final script will sneak in even more interesting parallels and contrasts between their characterisations. "You got this pookie" is one of the ever increasing number of phrases that have ruined my vocabulary, but other than that it WAS what I truly believed when I said it. As for the three brothers, I want to take a peek behind the curtains (ayo Curtains Call reference) and redirect some of the heat away from you. The brothers were the most commented and divisive element from the feedback we received, and I think it's fair for the audiences to know the horrible truth... I am the one who swayed Loudo's hand into creating the two brothers. The initial idea is that it would be a son-father duo who'd be on the quest. I immediately said that I don't trust FVN readers with a father character and suggested replacing them with the three brothers, introducing a competitive element between them. Three brothers competing to inherit a kingdom or to marry is a trope in Slavic (although through osmosis I vaguely remember seeing it in other cultures) faerie tales, like in the Russian Frog Princess, or the Serbian folk tale literally named "The Three Brothers". It is a common trope that two of the siblings are foolish in some way, but the youngest one is wise or pure of heart, and either bests or redeems his siblings. I do wonder how you would have handled the actor equivalent of the father, since we only discussed his role as a character in The Sinking Tower.

So yeah, these characters being a bit clumsier might have been the result of our biggest compromise and creative change. The campfire discussion scene is the one where I was a bit misguided too. When I got the rough WIP manuscript, that scene was the hardest to follow since there were no character tags indicating who is saying what. I assumed it would be Brutus and Belfort butting heads, and Basil would be the youngest brother and daddy's little boy, listening to all the stories and lore, infodumping. I thought he'd playing the peacemaker, therefore justifying his title as the wise or smart. While I'd say our cooperation was well coordinated and harmonious despite us operating pretty autonomously, this one weakness shows in the initial demo where we should have communicated more. There's some more scrapped characters, but those we should see in the subsequent updates, so I'll shut my mouth for now. Another minor character I want to discuss is the Director. I kinda fell in love with the idea of him from just your descriptions and the lines you gave him. I tried to initially make him a sprite that would be lurking somewhere barely visible in the shadows of the theatre background, but I couldn't place him in a way that I was happy with. I am very happy with his CG and his presence in the VN overall. The poor guy is trying to balance giving this ragtag buch of dorks a decent amount of creative liberties they clearly can't be trusted with, and every time he intervenes to try to put the play back on the rails it's a treat. He shouldn't have gagged Basil at suggesting polyamory though, let my boy speak the truth!

Regarding the paranormal romance genre written by women and for women, I will have to break your heart and say that you didn't manage to emulate it as well. That is probably a good thing. It is a community that I observe from the sidelines in a guilty pleasure way. Curtains Call isn't nearly spicy or problematique enough to emulate the writing from that genre. FVN readers often get scandalised or fawn over "red flag wolves owo" but my god, these bad boy wolves hold no handle to the average male love interest from the paranormal romance MxF book. The amount of emotional, physical and sexual abuse they tend to put the heroines thorough, and sometimes the female lead ends up dishing the same punishment back... You were not deranged enough to reach the level of the suburbanite mums who write and read these, congratulations! Mission failed succesfully. If I'm feeling particularly monstruous I will force to you read A Court of Thorns and Roses one day so you can learn from the masters. It will be incredible (derogatory). Since I yapped a lot, I just want to quickly touch on the topic of humor. I think we talked and attended enough book club meetings together to know each other's tastes and the tastes of some regulars who have a fondness of this humor style. I personally absolutely adore when a story gives me whiplash of emotions and can flip between comedic and horrifying at the drop of a hat. It is a skill that has to be honed, since otherwise the tonal shift can take me out, feel cruel in a way that the author probably didn't intend, in poor taste, or god forbid a Marvel writing Whedonesque quip. It's not a skilled I have mastered perfectly and I think most if not all works I adore have occasional hiccups when it comes to this delicate balance.

Now that I teased that there were some scrapped concepts and missing stuff that is yet to be introduced, what would you say about those things? Any abandoned writing ideas you'd like to share with the class? Any things that got changed or took an unexpected turn even for you, the girl writing this?

🧌  LOUDO

I also found the comment about the expressions being spot on funny, but for a different reason. I do agree with the commenter that the expressions for the characters are great. But because of the aforementioned hiccup (i.e. you sending me the expressions as I was coding the game during the last few hours of the jam), if you pay close attention, you will notice that from a certain point onward the characters... just stop changing expressions lol. I think (hope) that no one noticed because the characters have other ways of being expressive (like their movements and the shading), or maybe people noticed and were merciful enough not to mention it.

I think the idea of having three brothers was a fun one, and I do like the characters we got out of it. This might have been my limitation, but I do wonder sometimes if the story would have worked better with my original idea of a father-son duo, mostly because I feel like it would have been easier to keep the scenes between those two more focused and plot relevant... In a way, I ended up keeping the father angle anyway, except now it's a posthumous character. But like I was saying, I wanted to push myself to write more group conversations and the idea of the three brothers was fun!

As for the campfire scene, I do realize I was a naughty boy and the script I handed to you wasn't the most helpful... I have this quirk that when I write a script for an FVN I never use character tags until it is time to code. The reasoning is mostly to encourage myself to make sure the characters feel distinctive enough. But considering I was sharing this with someone else, I should have made an exception...

Like you were saying, in my mind Belfort was always meant to be the youngest brother because that's usually how the fables go. When you have a trio of brothers, it's usually the youngest one that is the hero. And while it would have made sense to leave most of the exposition for Basil the Smart, I wanted to establish that Belfort's animosity towards demons was a bit more personal. That is again a leftover idea from when I was writing about a father-son duo: the father would share his bigoted ideas about demons with the son andm, when he would inevitably die, the son would have a personal reason to seek revenge.

Also, since Belfort being "the Brave" was a bit of an abstract virtue, I ended up making Belfort the charismatic leader of the group, the one with the most people skills. If you're familiar with D&D, I would say Basil is the character with the highest Intelligence, while Belfort maximized Wisdom and Charisma...

As for your comments about the romance for women, it is interesting because it was partially a deliberate choice and partially something I struggled with. The premise of The Sinking Tower (the story-within-the-story) has to do with a princess being kidnapped, and as I was writing it I immediately struggled with the idea "How do I avoid making the demon a creepy kidnapper? How do I avoid the Stockholm syndrome pitfall trap?" I won't go into too many details because how I resolved this tension became a central part of the plot, but let's say I intentionally steered away from the most problématique elements. 

As for your questions, I guess we can reveal there are at least two minor characters who have yet to make an appearance. One of them has yet to make an appearance in the story, while the other one was cut for lack of time. Some people have commented that sometimes the transitions from real world to play are a bit abrupt, and they are on to something. Some of the connecting scenes were cut, in particular the ones featuring the characters getting in and out of costumes. This was for a variety of reasons: bad time management on my part mainly, but in part it was also that the costumes weren't finalized until very late into the production. It was difficult to write scenes focusing on the costumes without having a clear picture of what those costumes would look like. As a fan of works with a brisk pacing though, I will be treading carefully because I don't want the added scenes to slow down the pace too much.

As for abandoned writing ideas... Looking back at the first very VERY rough outline I sent you at the beginning, I'm surprised at how much of it still holds. A lot of scenes got added and will get added as the story takes shape in my mind and on the page, but for the most part the structure hasn't changed. There are two big exceptions. The first difference we have already covered: the story originally featured a father and son team instead of the three brothers.

The other difference is a more fundamental one. When I approached you with the first idea for this story, this was basically going to be a psychological horror. The shifts between reality and play were going to take a much more sinister tone. And while the next part of the story is still going to feature some of that, the tone is completely different than what I initially envisioned. Not only did the romance take center stage, but I found myself much more interested in the characters' journeys of self-discovery. 

I'm gonna shoehorn this factoid here, but I was myself one of the gay theater kids during high school, and it was honestly one of the happiest experiences of my life. So I guess the positivity of that chapter of my life ended up affecting the story. While the plot of Curtains Call is not autobiographical, the setting and the premise definitely is. One of the joys of my school theater is that our plays were usually books we needed to adapt to the stage ourselves, often with humorous twists. For anyone who was confused by the boys having such large leeway with the script, I will say in my defense that that was very much inspired by my true life experiences in my high school theater!

I guess the other biggest surprise for me, the girl writing this, is that Belfort's actor ended up being a lot more different than I initially envisioned him. We still haven't seen much of him yet, so I guess our readers won't be able to tell what the heck I'm talking about, but as I began writing the character of Belfort as the charming leader of the trio, my idea about his actor changed a lot. While in my initial outline he was almost a cartoony villain (his working name in our outline was Gaston, of Beauty and the Beast fame), in the final version his antagonism will play out in a much subtler way. 

Any other topic you would like to talk about? Or would you maybe like to wrap things up by talking a bit about the game jam in general? 

🐆 KERCHE

So both you and I fumbled the expressions in some way, but the audiences still love them... Tbh the saving grace is somewhat that the latter half where things start falling apart have lots of distant shots and silhouettes as smoke and mirrors for our fumbles. I love how you exposed some first draft quirks (like language switching mid sentence and the no name tags quirk), your reward being only the universal reaction of people going "I don't think that's normal" nlskagnla I think Belfort was the character that wiggled his way out of the vision both you and I had initially. You kept calling him Gaston and I kept calling him Steele, so I think we were both cooking up the most dastardly bastard antagonist to our two little gay boys. In the end he ended up charming us both and mellowing out into a problematique fave for me who is more a drama loving diva. I was labelling all the virtues of the brothers starting with S when naming the files, with Basil the Smart, Brutus the Strong and Belfort the... Sexy. I was pretty happy with how his sprite came out on multiple fronts so I just followed my heart. I guess bravery and sexy can fall under the vague DnD stat of charisma! Also all their acronyms would end up being BS in the end, which is how many readers ended up feeling about the brothers lol Regarding the world's least problematic kidnapping, I think you did a great job! It feels like a pact with the demon/be careful what you wish for where there are no take backs, but all parties did knowingly agree. The brisk pacing, switching between reality and play and the Demon's strangely alien way of thinking and talking makes it avoid some of the common creepy moments that we often get.

As for the minor characters who haven't made it to the first demo, all i can say is that I'm pretty excited about them, even if they have a pretty small role. The connecting tissue scenes with the costume are really fun and I'm looking forward to drawing them, and the other character I think is just a little gem when it comes to the emotional core of the game. But that's something for the readers to ponder until we grace them with an update! I do like that our entry ended up being pretty unique as a fantasy romance in the end? I also think I came in with much broodier visual direction and story beat expectations, but I think we accidentally steered each other int othen direction of something more akin a faerie tale (but without the fucked up original brothers Grimm parts) mixed in with some YA fantasy romance adventure with all the cringe surgically removed (hopefully).

Reading about the positive theatre experiences and seeing that the theatre gay thing is actually a thing and not just a western stereotype made up to sell more Glee (It's either not big where I live or I just live in a bubble)! My own little reveal I wanna shoehorn in cause I didn't find a better place in here is... The title. I want to reveal to our audience the absolute brilliancy how we managed to put our two brain cells together and name it as we did. When discussing the entire theatre thing I suggested Curtain Call, since that is the term for the final bow of the performers at the end of the play, plus I couldn't stop thinking of the phrase "it's curtains for Polonius" as we have the actors exit the play over time. Me, being the ESL respector of the English language that I am, misremembered it and told you "Curtain's Call" in a brainstorming plan. Of course, my apostrophe didn't make it through the medium of sound. In the end our game of broken telephone landed us on the final title, and it was only a bit later that I told you that we both missed horribly. I remember you being very surprised because (dear Post Mortem readers, imagine Loudo saying this in the most haunted voice) "The Curtains... they Call to me...". I bring up this little title misadventure because it is a perfect snapshot of how this entire jam went. Mistakes were made, we communicated well and openly but still managed to misunderstand each other, but in the end it all miraculously worked out and it was a blast. As you promptly put it - it was a beautiful disaster! Other than that I don't have any more topics I think. I could yap forever if left unchecked, plus I don't want to risk exceeding the word count of the VN itself

Regarding the jam - all the best? I went in pretty hyped when we teamed up, got a bit frustrated and bitter about the rules being made even more Byzantine which I didn't think was possible compared to 2024 (the omission of the join button being the most unhinged decision I can't believe 4 people agreed to without anyone slamming their fist on the desk to veto it). That little frustration, I was very elated about everything regarding the jam the whole time. Real life tried to prevent that and I must admit I kinda disassociated through the latter half of May from being very stressed at my dayjob, but it went relatively smoothly. The good thing about the May Wolf jam specifically are some I took for granted until I really noticed their ommission in other jams. The inclusion of a theme is a great initial prompt and starting point, and seeing people take it into wild directions is always a joy. The community streams in the FVN server bring a level of solidarity and camaraderie I haven't seen in other jams like this. The voting, while I understand stressful for some, is another thing I enjoy. Seeing entries that stand out in one or two categories is always good. A messy VN rewarded for having exceptional writing, a great game dragged down for not bothering to engage with the theme, or a VN that is just esoteric nonesense excelling in creativity and presentation, but lowered by the incomprehensible story not clicking with the readers. The considerate ratings and thougtful feedback I saw readers and fellow jammers leaving for each others is honestly my favourite part of the entire hectic experience. I am a sucker for people sharing their perspectives ( and hot takes), so this entire thing brings me so much joy. I am going to end on a very cliched "and how about you?" Give me your hottest takes about the jam itself. You are the lead writer, give us some banger closing thoughts! No pressure 

🧌  LOUDO

Ah yes, the origin of the title is a pretty funny story. Eagle-eyed readers might have noticed the game's thumbnail still says "Curtain's Call" with an apostrophe...

Also yes, I think the biggest pleasant surprise this year was definitely how much readers and jammers engaged with each other's entries, leaving thoughtful comments and reviews and giving everyone a fair shake.

While I agree having a theme has been a positive addition to the May Wolf experience, I must admit how people rate and comment on theme impletation continues to be one of the most buffling aspects! We've had quite a few people saying they weren't sure what the "Light in the Dark" was supposed to be in Curtains Call. And unlike with last year (when Ugolino was rightfully beaten with hammers), I thought how we implemented the theme was pretty obvious...

Unfortunately, I must admit I was a naughty boy and I've had quite a busy couple of months, as I am moving to and renovating my new home. While last year I was very active in giving feedback on all entries, this time I still need to find the time to read all of them. If you want to hear my thoughts on them, (insert shameless plug here) you will need to join our book club where we discuss FVNs monthly.

I guess my last words are going to be about what people can expect for the future of this project.

First of all, we will be publishing a small fix in the coming days (possibly even tomorrow). This is Jam Version 2.0 is still going to feature the same story as you're already familiar with, we're just going to correct some bugs, grammar mistakes, Italian lines that inadvertently slipped into the final script... Nothing major.

Then we will be working on releasing a final complete version of the game for some time after the summer. This version will include a few more substantial rewrites (mostly of the currently final scenes) of the first part of the game... And then, we are going to finish the story!

Hopefully, itch.io will not have expunged all furry content from the site by then... We weren't really planning to release this devlog at a time when the future of the FVN scene looks more uncertain than ever, so I haven't prepared much to say on that front. I guess I can only add to the chorus of people who encouraged you to support your favorite artists and developers and keep making art!

See ya all soon.

🧌  LOUDO & 🐆 KERCHE