wow, thanks a lot for that in-depth writeup!
I'm sorry that the panning posed an issue for you - this will probably be more effort to do for the footsteps, since the panning is backed into the all the sound files for these, less so for the atmo. We might be able to look into this if we find the time to work on the post-jam version.
For the game start, I can imagine having another atmosphere sound fading in - that could help the player realize that the game starts.
In terms of a cue for interactions, some kind of proximity indicator could be helpful, I agree. As I knew the map layout during development, I was surprised to find out how much searching is needed to find things when I finally saw someone else playing the game.
As hinted, I'm not sure how much time we will put into the game after the jam. We will definitely update the game with a few improvements after the voting period ends, though.
Thanks again for all that valuable feedback!