I appreciate the feedback! There is a pair of slippers that you can grab during the ritual setup that make your footsteps silent, but it is 100% possible (just a lot slower) to beat it without them. He reacts to any noise you make including normal footsteps (while not sneaking), turning on lights or the TV, and lighting candles, so it can feel like he's always on your tail but his vision is deceptively short. I'm not sure why he would be stuck in one room unless there was another bug we may have missed :'(
The darkness being hard to record was something I hadn't considered but it is something I'll consider on future projects, thanks for playing!