The moment I realized I needed to look for little things on the screen I started to get that exploration feel - where it feels really good to make forward movement. Adding in mechanics as you go is great.
You've definitely gotta give a bit more of a clue of what you can click on, though - otherwise the player just has the wave the mouse around on every screen to figure out what's actionable. There were a couple of things in particular where it just looked like background stuff and led to mouse-waving mode.
If there's more coming, review to be continued...