Thanks for the tips, though I think the main thing that threw me off was that the game LOOKED like a dungeon crawler type game at first and by that logic, spending health down to nearly zero felt like a really bad idea... But you're supposed to treat health like ammo you use or lose with each "reload"(heal). Once I figured out dropping my health down to exactly 0 (or as close as I could get without going under 0) and then healing with stored level ups (another minor difference but intuitive once you know level ups full heal you) or health scrolls (which I initially wasted try to "keep healthy" before), it started making sense.
The book also didn't do a great job explaining this other than something along the lines of "It's safe to lose health" which had me even more confused considering dying just reset my progress and I hadn't quite understood all the patterns on my phone screen yet. Still don't like how the game teaches people how to play it, but I can accept it was supposed to be "part of the puzzle" and that some people like that sort of thing.