I don't mind the hot spots so much, and I agree with some others that they do add some pacing. I feel like they just need a bit of tuning, perhaps what would help the most is not having the possibility of a click through when clicking on something that isn't a hot spot, which makes it easy to accidentally skip unintentionally. Instead of how it is currently (for example: click on mouth to say something bad, click anywhere else to skip saying something) perhaps change it so that it's: click on mouth to say something, or click on a button/thought bubble that says something like "keep my mouth shut." Clicking anywhere else wouldn't progress. This at least for me would help with the accidentally skipping things I didn't intend to.