Wow! Very thorough and thoughtful feedback! I really appreciate that!
Yes, the difficulty is definitely a problem that I was aware of while making the game. I think spending some more time on level design (all levels except the first four were (stupidly) designed the night before the night before the jam ended) would have helped, and I really like your ideas here as well, especially breaking the board up a bit to give the player safe tiles to stop, observe, and plan movements. That said. I can't shake the feeling that there is something fundamentally, conceptually wrong with this that lended to these issues as well. I don't know. I'm both tempted to mess around more with it (because there are things I really like) and to throw the whole thing in the hypothetical garbage and never look or think about it again. In all, this game jam has been a struggle for me.
Anyway, I'm sort of thinking as I type, and you don't really need that while just trying to leave a little comment on my jam game. Thanks so much for taking the time to play and leave feedback!