I haven't played the game yet, waiting for the PC release. I saw "suggestions", and after seeing a guide in Jayisgames...
Puzzles:
Make a farm: There's a messy patch of earth. Fix it. It gives food over time (you need to pick it), so you need to spend less. But you shouldn't rely only on them.
Do-it-yourself repair of the house rooms: it should be available from start, need some requisites, like tech (see below), instead of buying it. Each room is a puzzle.
Orchard: plant trees and watch it grow and give fruits.
For the story: search about the previous owner of the house

Tech:
As a equivalent from Virtual Villagers.
It gives boosts or new abilities. I recommend a library. You buy books. For example...
Complaining about the food system? A "Cooking" book to cook faster, cook meals that restores more hunger (thus need to eat less frequently).
"House Maintenance": to clean the broken rooms.
"Building/Carpentry/Engineering": To fix broken rooms.
"Botany","Entomology", "Paleontology", studies of any other collection: collectibles are more common or are more valuable when selling.
"Gardening": For the garden (farm, orchard)
I'd like lots of themes, but most themes should have one book(things to buy) to buy at most, optionally with multiples books for few themes.
To make you spend less money, and one more in-game currency. I think, Exp. points, you win them when your people do actions, any actions.

Expand:
Your house start with a limited terrain, you can make it bigger. It may be that you buy (with in-game money) the propiety, or the area is blocked.
You can make a lot of useless stuff like space for the farm and orchard, a pond, a gazebo, a hammock, excavations (for the research of the previous owner), etc.
An arcade or a console with a game or games that the player (you) can play. It should be simple, like evading things, pressing to kill things, with a score and upgrades, etc. If you want a challenge, it should be less than 1 MB in size, so it doesn't overthrow the main game.