If you've never played Fear and Hunger, it's really easy to assume that there's no tutorial. At the very start of the game, a pack of angry dogs appears and mauls you to death. If you go through the front door, the pack of angry dogs follows you and mauls you to death. You can escape from the dogs in battle, but they'll keep chasing you on the overworld until they maul you to death.

The lesson the game wants to teach you is "Hey, don't stick around and fight enemies that will maul you to death", and "Hey, you should actually check out the side passages instead of the obvious way forward" because the dogs will not maul you to death if you dip into the side passage in the very first area. The game has a lot of such side passages that you need to look for later on that will save you so much grief, but you have no way but to intuit that this is something to look for in the first place after being mauled to death by dogs a few times.