I totally cleared out the first zone, but I kind of just got stuck teleporting back and forth not knowing where to go. I am also colorblind so that could play a role.
Ah, that's unfortunate. A lot of the key objects in this game are colour-coded, and I didn't have time to add accessibility features.
When you get to the organic zone, go right. You should eventually find yourself in a dead-end room with an ability and mini-boss. After getting the ability, there's a fairly obvious zone connector you can access which is the most straight forward direction to go in (but you don't have to).
The only colours you really need to distinguish are purple, green, and cyan, since those are the colours of locked warp points. However they're weapon activated, so really you can just throw whatever you have at them and if they don't open then you don't have the correct weapon yet. The halo effect around warp points was added fairly late in development so that it would be easier to distinguish warp point pairs, but another way to do that is by looking where a warp point is pointing, since if it's usable it'll always point to its partner.