Beat the game without looking at hints, the pen and paper were quite useful! Though, I will say that the maze portions (other than the one with the puzzle) seemed a bit unnecessary.
Thanks for playing, glad to know it's beatable without the hints. I agree with you that the mazes don't add a ton. Initially, the whole game was supposed to be located in a labyrinth and you would have to be drawing a map to track the paths, but then we didn't end up doing that.