Thanks a lot for the detailed feedback! Really glad you had fun with it, especially since this isn't usually your kind of genre :)
Your point about the tutorial getting interrupted by the combat escalation makes a lot of sense. I think the early game is probably asking the player to learn too many things while also preparing for stronger enemies, so I'll take another look at the pacing there.
And yeah, the combat situation you described definitely sounds confusing. You don't need to reach an enemy base before the day ends, so if everyone suddenly died without you really seeing what happened, then the game clearly didn't communicate that situation well enough. I'll check that part more carefully.
The event wiping out almost all of your villagers is also pretty brutal at that point, haha. Some of those choices are meant to have nasty consequences, but I don't want them to make the rest of the run feel completely hopeless without enough warning.
Day 7 is actually pretty solid for a first run! Really happy to hear you'd be interested in playing again.
Thanks again for taking the time to write all this!