Thank you for the kind words!
I was definitely weary about the slow start, and the initial difficulty jump of getting the other torches before the hook or book. But I didn't know exactly what to do about it, Outer Wilds solves this by just having so much to explore, that even if you find "nothing" in your first loop you still feel satisfied.
I thought about having a tutorial section that would essentially force the player to loop to get out of it (like grab a torch in a one way door). But didn't really want to then also force them to pause to loop the world.