I'm honored to have you try my game. Gulch Guardian's is a gem of a game, so thank you for trying out my demo. To address a few things below...
1. I really focused on atmosphere: sound design, lighting, timing of animations, etc. Glad I accomplished this.
2. Combat is definitely something I want in my game, and once you unlock it... it'll be more common. I think my opening just throws people off, so I need to work on introducing combat sooner but not take away that opening "mystery/atmosphere"... I plan to go back and forth with combat, exploration, atmosphere, etc. My motivation behind this is games like Last of Us. You have those moments of exploration and peace... but then you battle/fight some. I just need to find a way to really balance that... or have it make sense. I'm working on this part, though.
3. I actually plan to get a script made where you can press left/right OR up/down... plus a setting to reverse these, as well. Hopefully that'll give players more options and make enemy selection easier. As for documents. Not sure if I have to way to go back... or that would require more scripting. I could always add it. However, you can review all documents again by visiting the Database via the Ring Menu. I can look into going back pages for certain documents, though.
Thanks again for playing! Good luck with your game, as well! Really enjoyed it!