Thank you so much for the detailed feedback. I'm glad to hear that the tutorial text explained the mechanics well (aside from the lean mechanic, which I'm pretty sure I straight up forgot to include), but I'm even happier to hear that my doofy voice acting was what sold it for you. I had a ton of fun writing that video and I get genuinely giddy when people tell me they watched it.
I can't begin to express how happy your experience with the game makes me. That feeling of the enemies being insurmountable without proper prep is exactly what we were going for, and I'm so glad that landed for you. You are definitely not alone in your experience with the recall trap. I also barely used it. I wanted to either find a way to make it more relevant or just replace it with a better trap, but we ran out of time, unfortunately.
As for the lack of checkpoints, I agree 100% that this makes the game way harder than it should be. I actually had a checkpoint system that I broke at the last minute. The game was meant to save every time you cleared a room. That checkpoint system was the reason there was no way to recover health, actually. Your health was meant to remain persistent if you did the whole game in one run, or refill completely if you died and respawned. I'm sorry that my mistake had a negative impact on your experience with the game.
All that said, I'm glad you still had a good time. Thank you so much for taking the time to play our game :)