Thank you for your help ! I thought that the numbers said that the path must the straight in exactly X sides.
No problem :)
One strategy I found helpful was to repeat a run of levels leading up to the level I was stuck on and see if I could solve them in ways slightly adjacent to what I believed the rules to be. It reminded me a little of the treetop section of the Witness, as the precise rule can be partially hidden by the constraints of the early levels that introduce it.