From an artistic standpoint, I really like this concept. It's a very unique take on the theme, and I can pretty honestly say I've never seen anything quite like it. The use of minimal music and sounds is also extremely effective; the gentle yet intimidating music when the ink monster showed up unsettled me pretty well. From a gameplay perspective though, I found the lack of visibility pretty bothersome. I know it's kind of a silly thing to complain about when it's the whole point of the game, but the fact that I couldn't see much of the game world made it hard to understand exactly what was happening when I was interacting with objects. For example, it took me a while longer than it probably should have for me to understand that the ringing bell was closing a gate because I couldn't see the gate shutting when the bell rang. I ended up getting stuck in the area with the ink monster and the waterwheels since I couldn't tell exactly what the waterwheels were doing; it seemed like they were draining water, so I assumed the goal was to activate all of them and drain the river, but then it looked like some of them were resetting after a while? Ultimately, I couldn't get enough of an understanding of the area to really know what to do.
I'm not really sure what could be done to fix my problem with the game, since it's so closely related to the core mechanic of the game. Maybe if the ink trails lasted longer/indefinitely until removed so that
I could see more of the screen at the time? This might also just be a "me" issue though, and like I said I really like the gimmick from an aesthetic view, so don't take this to heart if nobody else complains about it. This is incredible for a first published game, keep up the good work!