Being the music guy on our team, I'm not an expert on these kinds of games. Keep that in mind for my review. Overall this was a nice story, beautiful art and fun to play! A few bugs left, some that were a little frustrating.
Gameplay:
Everything functions as intended, I did find difficulty to be a little inconsistent. I found the bears to be far far more difficult than anything else in the game. One bear in particular (the fourth bear that you see, last that requires stealth, just before the chase scene) could see thorough the rocky outcrop/tower so I wound up having to treat it as a chaser rather than a stealth enemy.
This section had me wishing there was a way to get back to the save point faster, I found myself mashing through the dialogue every time I died.
Compared to those darned bears, I found everything else a lot easier. I breezed through the spiders first time. I thought the section with darkness and relying on the thought mechanic was a lot of fun!
There was also a small bug where you could walk up the spiderwebs to the top of the cave wall.
I did also experience looping in the final cutscene.
Story:
I had a lot of fun with the story, I found the characters very cute, I was definitely very invested and was eager to see how it finished.
Presentation:
This game looked beautiful. The art style was great. I had fun with the little notes on the map and the comments on the items in the backpack. As ghostinthegame mentioned, the UI as really good too. You really went above and beyond here!
Creativity:
There were some really cool mechanics here, with new mechanics being added pretty regularly it kept me engaged. The thought mechanic as a hint tool in general and its specific use in the darkness stage come to mind as things that jumped out for me. This game has a lot of personality that jumps out at you.
I also really loved some of the noisy music tracks. The music that played during the flooding in particular stuck with me.
Horror:
Not a lot of this particularly scared me, and I'm not too hard to scare. I did jump when I heard a sound in my house while playing the spider level. Saying this, there was a great sense of dread and macabre throughout. I got a sense of the setting, but nothing was making my heart race.
Theme:
This very clearly fits the theme. As for bonuses, there were plenty of mazes, there was a cave in, there wasn't a player choice regarding preparation.
Conclusion:
An hour and a half of my time well spent, hoping to see more from you in the future!