Thanks a lot for the long feedback and for mentioning stuff that you liked and things you disliked about it!
I noticed rushing stuff for jams sucks the soul out of a lot of my ideas so what I can gather from your feedback as well as what some others have said is that I shall put quality over quantity, since a majority of the game were last minute decisions to somehow squeeze the game into the jam and really didn't contribute to a fun factor.
I was worried about including the theme through math riddles and there seems to be a split opinions with some people liking it a lot and others really don't. I agree that maybe it lacks information on what has already been done and where the items are located. You mentioned that you had to remember what you had already used and that this really wasn't fun. I guess it would have been better if there had been an inventory for the ingredients instead of running back to the spots and picking them directly. So I might revisit the difficulty and visual clues if I update the game after the voting period to make it more interesting/challenging.
I'll also keep in mind to double-check with others if the font is okay for whatever I do next!
Thanks a lot for liking the design of the witch! I was worried that the character design was a bit too cliche but it seems to be general perceived well. I just love designing cute girls. The raven was one of my last-minute decisions, replacing an invisible player character for an actual character. So you are actually spot on with noticing that the design is a bit bland, I might want to revisit this as well if I ever update this since even if his character seems to be well-liked, I agree that I could have done better with the character design especially compared to the detailed witch design.
Thank you so much for the feedback and explaining why you found some things good, some things bad or anything inbetween. It's extremely helpful to get feedback like this even if you just mention things you liked. It helps me understand which elements were well received and which were not and work towards a better balance for any future VNs!
When I join the next short jam I'll probably aim for a prototype of my idea rather than trying to squeeze in a full game.
And yeah VNs kinda rare in non-story related jams! But as a VN fan myself I just gotta contribute to submitting one to these :D