Hey Akumu Games, thanks for your comments! It's great to hear that you enjoyed the graphics and music. :)
We had considered having a silent protagonist, but decided that letting her speak would be for the best for the story (I understand that we didn't share a ton of the story though, so I can see why you'd think that). The humanoid creatures exist for a reason, and the friendliness is mostly because they were talking with young Lia. You'd be nice to a young girl too, right? ;P
I put a lot of work to get the puzzles functioning right, so it's nice to hear that you liked them. I agree that some more visual and audio cues would be good, but man that deadline snuck up on us. Fetch quests aren't a favorite of mine either, so given more time I would have liked to find another more interesting way to retrieve the pipes.
Thank you for your suggestions, they're definitely something we'll keep in mind. And thanks again for checking out Fading Remnants!