Fun take on the theme that totally makes sense, with a neat enough mini-game. Though more could also be done with the presentation as you're already aware of in the other comments, I was still happy to have played through it multiple times.
- My favorite part of this was the kind of corny game-show like transition into the seal the deal mini-game, it added a fun atmosphere to the experience. I can just imagine someone going into a shop, casually going to purchase something and a bunch of cameras and people jumping out to make a contest out of it.
The characters were pretty enjoyable to interact with and gave some nice pacing/build up between the mini-game moments, and of course their art is amazing. Nice music and fitting sound compliments the experience too.
It was a little thing but I liked the burst off the cube as you transitioned between the rows, that helped give that some more impact. The whole mini-game felt good though simple to interact with.
- I think the game would have benefited from a more over-arching observation point. Especially in the first playthrough, it's not clear what your budget is relative to how much you're wanting to/able to purchase. A price-tag beside each item would have really helped, so you could see that you didn't have enough, and that would also help you understand how much you may have saved through haggling. You would have felt the journey weigh on you, instead of just the individual conversations.
As great as the art is, I think for the characters that seemed to want different reactions, it would have been good to be able to have a different expression at least as they talked, for you to try and tell that you needed to change up your response. You could try and work it out intuitively and change it back if you saw an expression you recognized worked with a previous response. And having a more of an expressive/exaggerated character introduction/first sentence or two could help you feel out the initial responses to use too. Though you also don't want to just say 'hey use this response'.
On the note of responses, I think 'assertive' could have better represented the top option than aggressive. I felt hesitant to use that, but after seeing the some responses my character used for it, I think assertive would have worked much better and not felt like a potentially mean option. Sometimes it was mean, but on average it seemed closer to assertive, especially in the main conversation you use it.
For the mini-game, I think a different approach to based on the impact of the conversation, and some more clarity could have improved the stakes there. I double checked and having the best conversation with the first character, vs, the worst, just set your starting position/potential saving, you could pretty easily fill it and make the conversation you had lose value as a result and felt a bit anti-climactic.
It might be cooler depending on your goal, to have the conversation still set a starting potential instead, and require the player to gain the rest through a bonus. Sorry if this is a bit too much of a suggestion/feedback, but had an idea for it so ended up making a rough mockup of it.
Dodging all the dangers, gets you 70% of the score, any hits give you a penalty that extends from the right. Then the bonus, as a different kind of challenge and to change the pacing throughout the mini-game too, has you collecting yellow blocks. The yellow blocks are a multiplier based on how much you're missing, so that if you got each one exponentially you're haggling would make up for the lower deal you sealed. And if you miss a yellow block it's reset. So say you missed a yellow halfway, that would reset your exponential gain and you wouldn't be able to make it up, though you could still try and save as much as you could by not missing again.
That would create 2 angles of pressure. If you have a perfect conversation, then you still need to try and avoid hitting any blocks as that will reduce your possible savings. If you have a bad conversation, you'll need to dodge but also try and perfectly get all the yellow blocks that would increase the tension, and make you feel the weight of the conversation you completed.
Regarding the art, a few quick tricks you could use to at least bring it closer to the characters and not clash as much, is aligning the palette with the characters. Here's a quick example changing the red and blue borders. You can see it already blends in better on the sides than your original in the middle. Something to consider if you plan to refine the experience after the gamejam.
