Failing early is normal - your runs will get more consistent as you progress in the game across multiple days. And when they do, that’s when it really hooks you.
I’m switching between Blue Prince and some other games, but it’s still such a good time whenever I play it. But then again, I’m a fan of both roguelikes and puzzle games. Just didn’t expect these two genres to mesh so well.
To quote one of my favourite book series of all times (Mistborn): “There’s always another secret”.
Terraria. You can choose difficulty of the initial save depending on how familiar the players are, and there are several clear milestones that can serve as transfer point (usually marked by beating specific bosses). In a small world, 20 hours is probably doable? You can maybe find a suitable seed for world generation to be sure.
I was also thinking about Elden Ring - despite the game size, the minimum required amount of bosses to beat the game is surprisingly small, and you can also divide the game into milestones. If it’s too short (like, if your players are speedrunner), you can add the DLC on top.
Takes like this is what gives soulslike players a reputation of condescending elitist gatekeepers. They don’t even have a steep learning curve, early souls games are just janky in how they teach the player the basics.
In case you’re interested (you’re probably not), even soulslikes games usually put the tutorial messages in one place where you can come back to them to reread them