Aaaaand beaten!
I’m thinking it’s indeed not so much that the puzzles aren’t well-telegraphed, but there’s a few Backwards Puzzles. It’s one of Ron Gilbert’s “Why Adventure Games Suck” anti-patterns: https://grumpygamer.com/why_adventure_games_suck/
I solved at least one long puzzle chain without knowing why I was doing it, and at the end I had no idea what to do with the end result. Then after getting a hint (thanks!), I found out I missed half of a room because it was not obvious there was an edge to walk to, I found the _beginning_ of the puzzle.
If I had done things in a different order, the whole adventure probably would have flowed a lot better. I pretty much had a great time from that point onwards.
