I should use the objective marker even more in order to streamline the critical path as much as possible. Of course, there's a certain type of people who like to explore and they would be bummed out by too much hand holding. Maybe when you start the game you could have a choice between "normal" and "easy", and in easy mode there would always be the location of your next Infopack on the map - alongside coming back to life with more health when you die.
It is common in metroidvanias to have a critical path and optional side content and while I don't mind asking the player to go out of its way in order to access the side stuff, I more or less always want the critical path to be clear. Looking at a map and figuring out ALL the places you haven't been yet that could be connected to rest of the game sounds woefully boring.
Time spent on the project so far: 382 hours
Currently working on: Moving on with the story