Yeah, actually forcing the player to draw the map themselves is probably a bit too much for this day and age...
Although, I think it might be kinda cool to make a smaller game where this is forced by integrating map drawing inside the game, just to see what would happen. (actually I might even do that at some point)
Yep, only a couple of days ago (maybe a week) I saw it happen again, this was being played on the demo so it only has the blinking helmet and no outlines but still..
And you could kinda say that the helmet is like the final part of the tutorial, if you can't figure this out then we know there's going to be problems ahead.
So, that feel you're talking about there is pretty much exactly what I want the game to be so I'm glad it's at least somewhat succeeding.
As for exploration getting sidelined in favor of fights, I'll be doing it the other way around, with the exception being bosses.