Hello fellow first time Jammer! You did incredible for a solo project. It feels very polished and works end to end. Really like the concept and the approach in theme.
Music kicked in for me half way through as well which gave me a jump scare as I thought there was no audio haha.
Cannot give much feedback that hasn't already been given. All I could say is perhaps a short timer for your dialogue boxes, before you can interact with them? I accidentally pressed space bar twice in a row and accidentally closed the dialogue box a few times as it defaults on "exit".
Also perhaps intended, but on my first time play-through, I tried to go the opposite direction of the witch, couldn't leave the area, so went to talk to her and she ran away :< It was only on my second play-through I found she had dialogue haha.
Seriously though such a solid foundation to build on, well done!
Viewing post in GWJ77 - Talk your way out jam comments
lol, it happened to me in one of my playthroughs; I stepped out of the detection area and she ran. Stupid witch!
There might be a few things I can do to tweak it a little.
Regarding the dialogs, I needed to grab focus for the player to be able to use the keyboard and the only button that was perma-available was the exit button :/ Now, if you exit the dialog, you can trigger it again, and it will simply continue the same line of dialog. It only resets at the beginning of the cycle.
Speaking of cycle, the inspiration for the music usage was Outer Wilds (if you know, you know). I believe it can explain a lot. I'm sorry for the jump scare, though, it was not premeditated.
Thank you so much for playing, for the feedback, and for trying out several times with different playthroughs.