Hi!
Sorry that it's been so long since my last reply; I have been on a holiday trip abroad. Staying away from all kinds of technology.. haha. Back in business now.
I read that review you got from the judge(s). I personally would have given your game a higher score, but then again, a review is just a justified opinion. I liked your game very much audiovisually, and in my opinion, for example, your character portraits fit the game perfectly. The anime style gives the game the contrast it needs between the world and all the people in it. It makes it feel more alive.
About the amount of instruction in the game I partly agree with the judge(s). That is however, a difficult aspect in terms of game design because one of the main points in the game was to find out the path yourself. Like you said, one big puzzle. I bet some players need more instructions and some people only want the minimum. A save point or some kind of a skip option would be a good add like I have also said earlier, then it would save the player some time if they end up failing. Maybe a little less randomness as well; it also got me confused at one point. I also got stucked in the way that I couldn't figure out how to get enough xistence because all the other things I did consumed my stats even more. The best I could do was to have ~3 xistence when going to the elevator, I think. Any hints on getting more?
And yeah, I made it to the top 10 and it was a huge surprise to me, I'm very glad about that. It gives me motivation to go on developing :) I, however, got four different reviews and two of them were not so great experiences. I wonder why you only got one review?
I'm still thinking about whether I should continue developing The Sculptor or leave it as it is. Making the game longer would possibly require much additional design work as well.. And then it wouldn't be a "one-month-game" anymore. Have you, by the way, continued developing your game like you were thinking? If not, have you started any other projects? If you're on Twitter, give me a follow and I'll follow you back, I'd like to hear more about your future progress on gamedev. There seems to be lot of other gamejams here on itch as well, maybe we should participate in another some time!