The dev seems to be kind of a prick if you read things he says and in the QA in the readme with the game. I think he takes the "you're not a hero" thing a little too far. There's a certain point where you have to draw a line when your game trips on its own feet from aimlessness and difficulty because you value difficulty more than an actual playable game.
Don't overdramatize Eccma just because readme, lol... About the difficulty though, you really need to know what you're doing, a bit unfair to newcomers, but it's not unseen, Darkest Dungeon and Fallout definitely stand close to this game. Lona is voracious, she NEEDS to CONSUME, so you have to hoard as many food as you can first thing. You also cannot possibly think of beating bandits and monster hordes on your own head on, once you're outnumbered it's just over. Game tries its best to tell you "come on, take the companions, or you know, you're gonna die". Also probably tells you to be stealthy, Lona is small and weak, that's the most obvious choice to just sneak around and avoid everything.
The main quest is simple enough too. You visit all the close "!" locations, captain will say that he can let you escape this place for 20 gold, and that's about it. Do whatever you can and have fun on your way to survive and get the money, i doubt you can really get lost here once you realize you're free to roam around, do unique quests and get special events, all for the sake of doing whatever you want or earning them 20 gold coins.
Also, being "timid" is a suicide. There's not as much difficulty as just straight death traps, so savescum and check it out, Fallout 2 style, where you can just meet an impossibly difficult group and die. I'm a big Fallout 2 fan, so i'm not as unused to this kind of ass in my game, but i'll admit Lona is much, much more difficult to survive and play. Oh and also, Lona being a hentai game is deceiving, because it's hardly it, you should try to avoid being raped or being a prostitute too, to conserve all the energy, because recovering from that will take some real efforts and will deal considerable damage to your little resources.
But once you have started, you'll level up easily and have everything you need. I, for example, chose to be "tough" Lona this time. Robbed the forest of all the tomatoes and other stuff, leveled up enough to be bloodlusted and take elite weapons. Now i can FINALLY fight, parrying enemies with shield precisely, dealing normal damage, it's not as hard as it was. Mood improves with "masochism", making her always happy, and soon i'll get to level 40, where every kill, together with bloodlust perk, will recover my stamina and food, which will make me able to beat everything..!
In short, now that i've spent 7 hours - it's not thaaaat hard, somewhat fair game, but you'll need to be ready and determined just as with Darkest Dungeon or Fallout, as i already said, and get game over while learning the necessary information. Which is not expected of players that are here just for hentai, but i'm just always ready for battle in my hentai games...