Thanks for the feedback!
No I think the progression is definitely a failure on my part. I wanted to try and encourage players to try and explore and pick up subtle clues to progress, but in reality I found it very difficult to design clues that were organic and easy to pick up on. An issue compounded I think by the somewhat convoluted nature of our story and cosmic horror in general.
Great suggestion with the logbook, I will definitely give this some serious thought for future updates.
P.S. there is a walk-through on our Itch page with the puzzle solution if you weren't able to make it through and would like to see how it plays out! I definitely had the feeling last night that this was going to be an issue haha.
Thanks so much again for your kind words and highly valuable feedback. :)