What should any game be? Fun. Interesting. Exciting.
Is exploring a maze with difficult and slow navigation with dead ends, uninteresting loot and bland textures fun, interesting or exciting? If the answer is no, you have to evaluate what the actual purpose something like that is serving in your game. Especially the start of any game sets a big precedent, and if it starts off with a whole bunch of boring navigating through mostly empty areas, you're gonna lose people real quick.
I'm not gonna tell you how to make your game, it's your decision how you want it to play, but it's important to take a look at what are the things players are going to actually enjoy and what are they gaining from their time spent playing.
One of my pet peeves with RPGM games is the travel time between destinations, mixed with the sandbox nature of not knowing exactly where to go and when, and so having to check many areas before getting to somewhere where anything is, something which is extremely prevalent in the Renpy version of this, and honestly feels worse than even my memories of this game when it was in RPGM.
If you want a few minor suggestions that stick with your current systems, the most basic thing you could do is grey out/hide navigation options that aren't usable. If I can't go left, don't make me think I can even click the left button. Vae Victis has some areas that use a similar navigation system like this, and while they're used sparingly, with purpose, and don't take too long, they're still honestly not a very enjoyable part of the game... not a bad start though. You could take advantage of Renpy over RPGM, why should I have to move 3 screens forward to click something I already could see before? Just make things I can see autonavigate towards them & skip the busy work. Highlight areas of interest and/or block off areas still in development/filled with nothing. Add small bits of *something* whether it be comedy, worldbuilding, story/intrigue or spicy dialogue/renders, don't waste a player's time for exploring - pretty much all of those are more valuable to players than in-game resources in an adult game, btw. Most players are here for the scenes, game systems are secondary and really hard to execute well with such limited engines and budget, that's just the nature of the beast.
