Glad to hear you enjoyed the video!
I really should have tried playing with a a gamepad, it might have mitigated a lot of the smaller issues with the camera and movement interactions.
The pacing of the game is great overall, it makes clear at the very beginning that it's going to be a slower paced experience. As for the crouching, maybe a single obstacle where the player is forced to crouch, maybe early in the cave, could have gone a long way to mitigating the frustrations of thee boat section.
With the boat, the slow rate is perfect for a single trip but not for anything more than that. There already exists a point on the path that could be used for a closer respawn, the rock outcropping that I attempted to jump off onto. It would allow the boat section to remain largely unchanged but remove a considerable part of the retread to the spotlight section.
As for my feedback in general, were there any parts I was flat out wrong or mistaken in? I have no formal training in any sort of game design or production and always worry that my criticisms are either unreasonable or unfounded.
I was wondering if the SOMA reference was intentional or coincidental ^_^