First time I am playing this and love it. I like the simplicity of moving around, no having to move per tile to backtrack. The combat is short. Working out when to avoid enemies and when to fight them to find a new path.
I feel like this game could get further more content and could be worthy to be on Steam. Such as maybe adding a couple of classes for replayability and each of them having different abilities.
Maybe a little bit of lore and a basic story- such as some unique enemies when defeated will have a brief comment to the player before disappearing which could contain lore- a few words or a single sentence. Less is more. Just enough to fire the players imagination, with more questions than answers. The lore and any story would what would drive the player to explore and find them all.
There could be some ruins to explore (taken over by the forest) and you simply could change the color of the tiles to reflect the new location, along with now and again having some text that describes the setting. 'The rough stone floor echoes as you shuffle along', 'The dank smell of moss permeates the air' etc. This way you don't have to make more art- just add one liners here and there based on location type (if you were to add ruins the exist in the forest) and cavern area, devestated forest area etc.
A bonus idea, could be to add a player level editor, especially if the above ideas were implemented, we could literally make a new gameworld and lore.