Sorry for the late response, someone(not me, I put one out) forgot to put a pad in the puppy's den which was not the morning sight I was looking forward to.
The game isn't really save spammy at all, the thing is if you don't learn proper habits it won't really matter when you save.
As for the game taken at it's Vanilla state, it's excruciatingly hard at times. The game's color juggling is very complex in terms of the various pools you have to manage while still using that color to survive. This isn't helped by the fact that game actually forces you to learn how the world operates and thrives. You can get advice from the sisters, and sometimes even the brothers but a few of them will actually lie to you if it's for their gain. So you need to take everything with a grain of salt. Keep in mind I don't mean advice like "Hey, go here and you'll find color" and you go there and you fall into a pit trap and die horribly. That doesn't happen. It's much more subtle lies and half-truths, but I won't get into spoilers.
For all of this color management you have to search the various environments and start gardens which you harvest between cycles(I know!) and build traps lest they be destroyed It really, truly is a complex game but it's one that can be learned.
The absolute hardest aspect of the game, and what makes it so fiendishly difficult is the color management mentioned earlier. Without getting bogged down in the specifics, color acts as your life, weapon, tools, gift, and seeds for plant life. And while traversing the world map color drains from your health pools(which is converted into usable color). So actually balancing this while not overharvesting or not leaving enough to actually move between areas is what forces so many restarts.
Now, this all sounds like a bit much but luckily there is a solution to just enjoying the game if needed. The developers put up a list of mods and config changes that will significantly lighten the game's difficulty and makes management of color much easier. I don't recommend jumping to them but if it's the difference between playing and not playing go for it.
http://forum.ice-pick.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=9044