Thanks a lot for your comments!
Regarding tone/style, do you mean more setting-y content? If so, that's indeed on purpose because I wanted to make it setting-neutral (most of my games are). Good idea about introducing the questions earlier, you're absolutely right! They are indeed pretty central to the feel of the game, and that's not really evident until you read the whole text _and_ the questions at the very end! I even considered making extra sets of questions for a different, maybe lighter/more adventure feel... but never got around to it, didn't have enough time.
Regarding tension and such, I wonder if "tension" was a bad name. I considered "luck" but didn't want to have one increasing score and one decreasing score. I also considered "doom" but it felt maybe a bit too dark. I'm not sure it will be limiting in practice, though, as I don't think the players will feel that Carl cannot get angry only because the "tension" score hasn't increased (is that what you meant?). The idea of the tension score is to act as a time limit, so that the game isn't simply waiting until the 10th treasure and to introduce a failure condition. I had also considered counting the number of hexagon moves, or the number of explored hexagons, or whatever, but felt very awkward, very easy to lose count of, and very hard to come up with a good target number.
I'll try to find something for the scene setting, thanks!