Hmm, I'm not super sure what went wrong there.
- Turns are supposed to be 90-degree in a direction you choose. An early version had separate left and right turns, but this wasn't really adding anything to the experience.
- When you enter a brand new region (empty place on the map), you generate a street and yes, that could be a dead end. If you backtrack, you just move on the street you've previously drawn and only roll for a chance to meet somebody/find something. In this sense, you can never lock yourself, because you can always walk back all the way to your house.
- There is a hilarious, extremely small possibility of rolling 4 dead ends on the 4 ends of the house. In this case, technically, you'll need to "backtrack" across them until you find cigarettes or run out of time. I thought the possibility of this was too small to justify including a special rule.
I really am not sure if this is answering your questions, so please let me know!
P.S. Your enthusiasm for the game is inspiring! Thank you!
Sounds like I misunderstood how to move… ahah. When I got "right/left/go ahead/turn back" result, I was moving according to the orientation of the character, not the map! I'm not used to map-crawling but had a great time with this lucky family couple! (RIP Champ, you may come back later as an alien-zombie-who knows)