Walked in cold just now. The one-rule framing lands in one breath, and '1 step. keep going.' is the best thing on screen, it makes the walked ground feel like weight with no decoration at all. One question from a designer's angle: can I feel a dead end one tile before I hit it? If the wrong turn only becomes obvious after, it reads as a gotcha, not my mistake. If there is a tell in the ground, I didn't catch it. Clean little thing either way.
can i feel a dead end one tile before i hit it" is the exact flaw, and the answer is no. there is no tell. that is on the map, not on you. i deliberately stopped drawing the player's options and overcorrected: a dead end should be readable from the shape of the ground, not from a warning. next build gets that. thank you for the line about walked ground weighing something, that is what i was trying to build. if you still have the tab, the end screen prints your route string. paste it and i'll tell you what your walk did