Yeah, it can be a little obtuse. Most of which is on purpose. It's meant to be a trap to keep you in there.
The treasure chest is related to the trophy. You can get the trophy instead of solving the maze, but that's definitely doing it the hard way. Same with the smaller flames, it's not necessary to interact with those to proceed, but they're related to the trophy.
It's only the larger torches you need to worry about. To get past those, you have to interact with them and get it "wrong" first, then you can use the choice cancel mechanic detailed in the README to get new options.
And that's about all I can give for hints without just telling you the answer. =P