Thanks for the feedback!
As for the granular choices, you are 100% right that it was a time constraint. We had much grander ambitions of having multiple branching paths but couldn't quite get there. Your forest loop was probably identical on loop 3 because you selected a joke during the campfire scene. It keeps the loop the same instead of changing it. The original intention was to have a second option (make the journey spookier/make the journey more epic, something along those lines).
We learned a lot with this one and were able to get more done than in our previous jams, so we are really looking forward to our future projects!