Thanks for the feedback! Yeah I think the clover count was a common source of confusion too, when I watched other people play.
I just pushed a change in v1.1.9 (patch notes here) which should add some extra dialogue to make it a bit more obvious how many clovers were missing in the grass area at least.
As for the no-return ladder, I added the sign next to it specifically because a player (the real Vac herself) went down without realizing she had already been down there, and had to redo all the rooms… 😅