Thanks for playing and sharing this! As the talk that inspired this game said, when the player could do something the whole time, there is always a risk they will do that something too early. My hope was that if you sequence break like this, it would become clear that you were exploring off the beaten path and there was another way to go first. There will always be a curious player who wants to solve the final challenge immediately, and that is okay. Glad you still enjoyed it!
I enjoyed the game but playing I encountered the same problem, I didn't knew where I had to go, I think that the problem the game has is that is not clear where you can go to the next section, there is no indication that something is the end of the map or a way to cross, if the way to go at the start was more clear (maybe with an arrow in the floor, a door in the wall, or simply making the entrance bigger and centered not a hole in the corner) I think less players will uncover the secret mechanich in the begining. When you give the player something to do they will not try so hard to find what is hidden.