Interesting battle concept and good use of the narration with its mechanics. That you have to retry many times to do better than guessing.
At first I was very confused about the navigation. It probably was due to the keybindings being called left and right which made me think it was strafe left and right, while it was actually turn left and right. And since the map required a few presses to get into and out it wasn’t at all obvious at start. Once I realized it, navigating became natural.
I also missed the tutorial before I played but I managed to explore a fair share of the map before becoming mad. My strategy was mostly taking rows that showed blanks as much as possible. Not sure if that’s actually smart or not.
I must admit though that when I saw things on the floor I though I could interact with them somehow, but going into the menu system I didn’t understand “Ground…” as being pick up / interact / search that type of thing that I would have expected.
I also forgot to read the prompt about the memory in many rooms simply because my mind saw the puzzle in the middle and zoomed in on it. Perhaps it might have been good to put it a bit more prominently?
I’m guessing with a D-pad the going in and out of menus to map and back especially backing out, must be a lot more natural. It kept me avoiding the menus.
Hopefully this doesn’t read as me being overly critical, it was a nice game and it had interesting ideas in it.