Thank you for your thoughtful comment! Let me start by saying that the lack of sound effects are precisely because how ambitious the rest of the game was for the time frame, haha. We barely had time to put the music in, but ran out of time for sounds.
Marking objects the player already found on the map is a good idea, I will note this down for the next version, thank you for the suggestion!
The lack of direction is intended (with the caveat that there should have been an intro cutscene that at least tells you to get the four orbs but I didn't have time to make it). The design principle was: start out with four directions to go in, and once you pick one, you pretty much get locked into a linear path until you find the ability relevant to that path. Then the world starts opening up. I can appreciate how without a starting motivation/hint of what to do, it can be a bit obtuse.
All in all, thank you again for your feedback, and we're glad you enjoyed our game! :)