Thanks a lot for this! No worries about sounding harsh/negative; I'd rather get honest criticisms to have something to work on improving. Some of these things I was working on finding a solution for and others I hadn't considered, so it's definitely helpful.
Yeah this is exactly the kind of game I'd like to be playing; I've been on a quest to make/find a good game that gets that "just one more run" feeling like FTL, etc.
I think with some clearer presentation of information and maybe some tweaks to expand immersion/investment in the scene, this could be amazing.
Since your spaces are all themed events, have you considered changing to a scene when the player lands on a space? For example, if I land on the "Wizard" space, maybe change to a scene with a static image of a wizard, and show the text there instead of on the board space. That would do wonders for introducing immersion/feeling like you're actually on a quest.
I know that's a big ask; and I wouldn't want you to change your game if that's not your vision for it, but was thinking about how to address some of the other feedback/concerns I saw.
Yeah, rogue-likes/lites are one of my favourite genres, and FTL is among my favourite games. It's a genre that didn't have a place on the Game Boy back in the day, but one that I think fits really well, and one that I hope more homebrew devs explore.
I've considered the scene change with portraits for events, it's just something that I know would take me forever to do the art for, but definitely something I'd love to implement to an extent. My only concern would be bringing the player out of the gameplay too much if done every turn, so maybe only for certain event tiles.