Thanks for your feedback! You're right that something to help guide the player would have been helpful. The feeling I was aiming leaned more towards "thrown in the deep end", so I didn't want to highlight the location of items directly, and I never managed to come up with an alternative in the time frame. In hindsight, a map that indicates where to find things might have worked well.
I'm pleased that you enjoyed your playthrough though, and I'll definitely take some kind of tutorial or introduction into account if I ever revisit this project (or for my projects in the future too!)