Honestly not much of what I all wanted to do / had in mind, made it in time for the jam.
To interact with the quest giver / villagers (the exclamation points) you have to face them and sit down (pressing down).
Hmm! There is another comment on the running feeling sticky, Ill have to poke at that a bit more. It is just a vanilla sprite animation dropped in so I don’t know what any of that would be.