Spoilers below:
Okay this is really clever. This is a great concept for a game regardless of the theme, but you also nailed both of the themes at the same time. Bravo on that.
It took me a bit to learn the rules of the game. The key thing I had to learn was that the enemies don’t hurt you. Once I learned that I was able to play the game more how I think it was intended to be played, working out what the clues mean and how to interpret them and I really enjoyed that process.
It was interesting taking something like enemy AI which you usually think of as pretty non-deterministic and learning that you can follow a very specific path to get exactly the right result. I kind of like that I ignored the footsteps at first while I was learning everything, because when I finally took your hint and started using them, I was like “whoa, the enemies are right where they need to be!”.
Awesome work on this. I’m not sure if there’s more to explore with this mechanic or not, but if you can find room for more levels I think this would be cool to expand on in some way.