That was a long and fun play. Proud enough that I finished it that I putting the complete screen in the message! Probably my favorite concept in the jam. Scrabble but I'm in a world and changing stuff is such a fantastic idea. I love the vibe and that there is a clear goal which I have to puzzle through. The backtracking into the original hut was a great addition and good job making everything useful. No wasted words there is very important since it would be confusing.
WASD absolutely should not have been included in the movement. That was very frustrating for me personally. If you were afraid of people with 60% keyboards not having arrow keys you could have it as a checkbox to enable WASD or change the movement system to be a click system with the mouse so he goes towards where I click (like project zomboid for example). That would even let you get rid of space entirely as you would just click the thing you wanted to interact with.
The letters that I own should be seen on the HUD without clicking tab imo. Like on one of the sides of the screen in a HUD element possibly semi transparent would be good. they are just too important for me to have to look at a letter and go back in forth on tabbing in and out. As the main mechanic of the game, it should be very accessible like a health bar, or even more analogous, an inventory hotbar. Honestly, the quests could be moved to the HUD as well seeing as having more elements wouldn't be an issue in this game since there isn't much happening on the corners of the screen anyways.
The tutorial is a bit misleading for some. I showed this to a friend who isn't super good at games because I liked the concept a lot and he was confused by 2 things. First, he thought you could only add/remove from the start of a word (chair->hair, lock->clock shown in the tutorial). Secondly, he didn't understand what could be changed and what couldn't. This was also a problem with me as it took a while for me to figure out I could mess with the rivers/lake because I assumed it was like the trees where it was impassable. Both of those mechanical misunderstandings could be fixed by tutorial tweaks and making unchangeable objects unique in some way. Much like how items with borders are ones with colliders, unchangeable words could be different color, font, or transparency to make it more obvious. I believe there should also be something to distinguish words that have not been touched by the player yet. That way you can do some process of elimination like "okay I haven't touched bed yet so there must be something there" which is exactly what I did to win but not everyone will put the mental effort into remembering which words have been messed with.
Lastly, the goal words are a bit too out there in my opinion. Like some of those words very few people know and those who do know them would never think of them first. The game itself takes enough braincells. This unfortunately caused almost everyone playing this game by going to a word, pressing tab, and then clicking all the buttons they have hoping it would make something instead of the, supposedly, intended loop of "Oh I need a transport", "bus is a transport", "this is close to bus", "I need this letter to make it bus", and loop. This could be fixed by making the words really obvious. But I think the more interesting way to fix it would be by putting underscores or another symbol in the spot of words where a letter must be added. That makes it more like wordle where you'd be like "I need something to put on my head; lets see, I have an n and 4 words that have underscores on the map; nlock, no, bnead, no, crown, yes!".
I don't want all my criticism to make you feel down or make you think that this game is worse than other games I've given less criticism to. This is top 3 games for me this jam so far and I love the concept. The fact I have so much to say is a testament to how interested I was in it.