Thanks for playing my game live, all this feedback was very valuable!
The save system is something I probably would have done if I took more time to finish the game, because the current state of it is kind of a tutorial for what I had in mind.
I'm not a fan of explaining every game mechanic in high details in games. From experience as a player, I think it feels pretty good to see or understand something that was not explained in plain text. For example : advanced movement in Celeste, or understanding an enemy AI in a Souls game.
Most of the bugs you experienced, I did not see them because I restarted my game when dying instead of trying to play again, so that's on me.
"dying when running out of torches" is an oversight from me : I implemented a check for soft lock (no move available) but forgot to take into account that the player could be able to craft... Again, I never ran into it because of the way I played : always stacking up on items.
Lessons learned : less procrastination, test while playing non-optimally.