Thanks for giving it a try! Really appreciate you for point out those bugs-- I'll be sure to clean them up in the full game.
As for the difficulty difference... yes it's intentional. The poor path should be harder in the beginning, but easier after the "mid-point" of the game (don't want to spoil it in the comments), since the characters don't have good armor/weapons and a limited amount of money. On the other hand, the rich path should be the opposite: easier in the beginning and harder in the second half. However, neither one should be impossible, so maybe I need to tone down the poor path more in the final version.
To add on to what I said, I didn’t realize there was a way to rest/heal as the poor path at first (because I was clicking to interact rather than hitting the interact key). Of course, knowing this now, it made the beginning portion of the game much more manageable, still difficult, but not nigh impossible as I originally thought it was.
I'm really looking forward to how this game turns out, and I’m excited to see how the rest of the game turns out, and how the branching paths will change how things go in the story! (Also, personally I’m a huge fan of seeing what game overs/scenes I can find, so I’m looking forward to seeing what ya have planned!)