Pretty cool concept, I got 26
I think the game could be better if you leaned more into the puzzle part, so maybe you can't place torches on water and you have a limited amount of orthogonal (4 directional) and 8 directional torches and you need to save the travelers somehow. Ofc then you can't just place the travelers randomly because the game might be unbeatable so some kind of level system would be needed. Well, that's just my 2 cents at least