Was reading the description of your game, and was trying to imagine what kind of game to expect and how it would play. For one, I had absolutely no idea of how this will look and play like, and second, I was sure once I start playing, I will understand nothing at all! But what a surprise... Not only have you found a pretty creative way to express that idea through an UI and inputs, but also, thanks to your excellent narrative, I knew what to do from the 1st second on! Great job!
To your questions:
Difficulty balance - I got everything pretty well done until the NPCs came in - the act of translating emotions to these switches was too much for my little multi-tasking abilities. After that, I everything went down the hill pretty quick.
Difficulty level and design of individual mini-games: The minimap was surpisingly well controllable - I thought, this will break my neck, but it didn't. The slider is to hard to control - a number input (just any number you type is interpreted as HP) would have been better, I think.
I am left with wondering what kind of game the player was playing ;-) Putting all these things I had to "display" together, this game must be a wild and crazy one!