Thanks for the detailed feedback!
And yeah, the tutorial got left behind when I had to fix some game-breaking bugs just before the deadline, and I only had time to so little things (e.g. the tooltips) and hope people would pick up on what you were supposed to do. The point about having a more obviously unbeatable enemy is a great idea; that way it's extremely obvious there's no way you can just muscle through.
If the game did make you lose when you killed the princess as the goblin, that would have been a real bad bug, since that will definitely mess with your understanding of the game. I'm glad you stuck it out so you could experience the intended gameplay. Thanks for playing!