I really really loved the story behind this game and had a nice time playing. I liked learning about the characters and exploring the town. The letter writing aspect was a super unique and compelling storytelling mechanic that I don't think I have ever seen before! The movie at the beginning was also a really neat touch. I also thought the final campfire shot was really cute. I think for some improvements, I would love to see unique assets. I think the asset pack used was to the detriment of the game feeling unique and tailored specifically to your purpose. The little quests of chopping wood or fishing didn't make very much sense in order to get these people to open up, because the characters never asked us to do those things and the quest didn't relate to the person's job (besides the gardening one). The limitations of the assets also forced most of the story to be gleaned from text as opposed to visual storytelling. A bakery for the baker, a greenhouse for the gardener, or even gray hair on the "cranky old neighbor" would have gone a long way to really sell the story and help keep the characters visually distinguishable. More character interaction/dialogue from the characters would have also been a great way to help make every character stand out. The Minecraft sound effects also distracted me just because they were from Minecraft and it took me out of the game a little bit (although I think they were utilized well!) Finally, the letter writing process could have been a little clearer. Sometimes multiple words could make sense in the blanks and sometimes the word that was supposed to go in the blank made less sense than some of the others. Overall, I really loved this game and post-game jam would love to see an even more polished version with character interactions and a more cohesive world!
In case you do expand upon this project I also wanted to include a few bugs I encountered:
-Writing the name on the letter doesn't matter for any of the characters as long as you pick the right template. (i.e I gave Mr. Smith his letter but addressed to Lily and he still accepted it)
-if you are moving while you interact with anything, you will continue moving in that direction while completing the interaction (i.e fishing, watering flowers, chopping wood, etc.,) and it will cancel the animation for that interaction
-When writing letters I got softlocked a few times by pressing e after addressing the letter to a character.
-After giving a letter to someone the camera locks on their house but the player does not lose control of the character and can continue walking out of frame
-not necessarily a bug and SUPER nitpicky, but the final campfire scene has the shadow of people standing from head to toe which wouldn't be the case unless they were laying down.
great job again! You have a really cool thing going!