I just started the game and instead of following the quest after being told to speak to Orderic, ended up chatting up and working for another character. That led to time passing and then another dialogue triggered another work mini game (I'd been speaking with the lumberjack both times). Now it's evening and I can't seem to pass the time in any way as the quest is asking me to repair a house but I do not have materials for it

Similar thing happened to me. Went to Orderic  after talking to some villagers in the square, but it didn't trigger his introduction dialogue. I met with the lumberjack after and the quest went past Orderic and I got stuck at night time without enough resources to repair the house. Ended up just starting a new file, skipped through dialogue and went straight to Orderic.

Think this was a bug in the first version of early release - make sure you're using the 4.3 (or later) version of the Adventure for the current version of the game