Thank you so much for such detailed feedback! We are really happy you enjoyed the idea.
Yes, we didn’t have as much time to playtest as we wanted, so the game ended up being more difficult than intended! -_-’
As for losing progress when dying, we thought about this during development but didn’t come up with a satisfying solution. If we made dying too forgiving, players might eventually discover everything after a few deaths, making the battles feel meaningless. We are totally open to suggestions, though!
Your idea is actually really cool and would add another layer to the game, beyond just losing tries!