I think a lot of the time, it can be hard to remember the many small decisions we make on the way to locking in a game's "vision", and so much time is spent building content that the sense of filling in the blanks takes over most of the other parts, but with a project made on such a short timescale, the details still felt really fresh and getting the core down was at least half of the process.
It's funny - I do absolutely prefer to minimize how much I use words and obvious tutorialization to teach players in general, but the game's extremely small resolution mandated this to an even greater degree - especially since I was dedicated to having proper button prompts, lol. I really liked the way the size constraint informed the game design on this one.
I agree with your take on where the game's design ultimately landed, and I'm really glad that you feel like it has a certain tactility to it, because that's such a big part of navigating a space in the dark. I do think, in some ways, that even if all the same visual cues were still present, it could have been nice to lean more on the simplicity of the footstep sounds/icons to gauge current location, but as I think on it right now, I'm getting the feeling that more involved movement mechanics would probably be necessary to let the mechanics shine along that axis. Perhaps one day I'll get real funky with it and make a platformer that explores this concept - or maybe a horror game. or both...? But for now I think this approach stands on its own really well.
Thank you for your thoughts, and thanks again for being willing to test the game out on such short notice!!