Hey, I also had some trouble playing.It has a really nice art style and music, and I can see that there are a lot of gameplay elements built in the game that could have been really cool. But there is a lack of feedback to the player what several actions do.
For example, I wasn't able to figure out crafting at all. If there would have been a textmassage like "didn't work" or "You got x", that would have helped a lot figuring out, which item combinations actually did something. Sometimes I just saw that the used itmes disappeared - but what did I get for it?
A similar problem for me was the exploring: What did these artifacts mean? They looked pretty cool, but couldn't figure out what the effects were on each so I just clicked trough random things.
After a while I finally figured out the shop. At first I thought, multiples of 10 would be good prices, but no, everyone was just angry at me (very funny noices, btw:) ). Then I startet going down with the prices (food --> 3 gold worked, yeah!), but selling 20 cans did really take some time because the price always resets.
So I think a few minor changes could really improve the gameplay: Less objects with clearer rewards, and maybe just show objects in the shop that are actually useful for the costumers (the alien cube, food etc.). And all the materials could for example belong to the workbench, where it would show a prompt when something useful was created.
If you update the game, let me know, I would like to try it out again, next time with some more information on whats going on :)