Love the character design, and the way stirring the pot works flavor wise.
If you wanted to make sure the player knows what they're doing before you start spamming them with mobs, you could start with only spawning a single mob, and having them move extremely slowly or be fully stationary as a secret tutorial step, such that the player can't lose whilst they're learning the controls. Then once the player has stirred the pot and beaten the first mob the game really starts.
Nice work on it!