Thank you for playing the game and for the comment!
Started with the theme, then decided on a storybook like gameplay with interactive parts, but didn't have a good way to traverse between locations so ended up with Slay the Spire inspired travel (The part I did). Was meant to be like a choose your own adventure/interactive storybook game with procedurally generated levels.
I feel we stumbled making the core gameplay loop interesting and strategic enough within the theme and the mechanics we chose in addition to the UI issues you mentioned. I think maybe only one stat should raise and one stat should lower with each interaction, but we had a problem with only interacting with thing at each location (the minimum) was usually the optimal thing to do.
Time definitely got the better of us. Our goal was to have ideally 3-5 interactable things spawning at each location and more locations. We have 2-4 at each location with a random chance some will be there or won't be there, to add variety, but sometimes only 1 will spawn at a location limiting choices.