I tried to make a filter on mobygames browser page for this, to me it seems it could be primarily a text-adventure, which sometimes had simple illustrations, depending on the platform. Maybe something like 'Gruds in Space', even though that game does not seem to kill off the player that quickly - if at all - I looked at a playthrough on youtube.

https://www.mobygames.com/game/from:1980/genr … y_score/page:1/

I didn't know that Mobygames still had the advanced search option.
I checked all the results, but sadly I didn't find the game. -_-
I also tried incresing the time period, adding the filters "1st-person" and "text parser", but no dice.