Thank you for the compliments, very much appreciated!
I did make the game more open and wanted the player to really piece together how to progress further, but I'm still learning and trying to find the perfect balance so I'm not just leaving the player completely confused or hand-holding them the entire way. So, it may not be a skill thing, just the game not leading enough on my end (truly a struggle when trying to add a puzzle to your game lol).
As per your comment and others, I did end up putting a walkthrough description on the game's page as kind of a messy patch, so if you wanted to continue further or were just curious on how you were supposed to progress forward, that's there for you.