This is such a cool game! The horror vibes are on point, with the audio, artwork, and narrative all being so good and doing so much to support the horror theming. This take on the theme is very creative (the forest looping on itself when you go off track, and being able to go anywhere to progress the story is super well built). Once the shadow monster came in, I was surprised, but it was super cool!!
I wish the shadow monster was used a little more sparingly in some way, because with the core gameplay after it's introduced solely being dodging it, it's horrorness lost it's impact for me, and just became a thing that I needed to dodge. Also to that effect, I really wanted to take my time and try to look at the notes after the monster was introduced, but because it was always 1 second behind me, I couldn't admire the beautiful artwork. I'm not sure how this problem could be solved, because pausing to read the notes also loves a bit of the real-time horror aspects I guess, but maybe putting the note on the side of the screen to look at while being able to move could work?
Don't listen to my critique too much though, it was still a super well made, scary, spooky, atmospheric, cool and fn experience. Great work!!