That sounds pretty good!
Going back through the same areas while trying to make it to the next region again doesn't really become frustrating in the demo, as you get better and know the rooms you get into a certain rhythm that's fun on its own, but having some extra things to help on the longer term seems good.
Also I played a bit more, got to pipeworks a few times again and got further so I thought I might as well write down some thoughts I had:
- The stutter from audio loading seems to be gone, though I got another type of stutter while reaching the next room in a region. I had the game on my hdd since I didn't expect it to need more than that but I've moved it to the ssd now, seems to be good.
- Grabbing items can be a little awkward at times, the game understandably prioritizes grabbing ledges so sometimes you end up grabbing everything around except items.
It usually depends on the surroundings and happens more with smaller items, especially cockroaches (it feels appropriate for them though!).
- I found the drill item you can use to create a climbable spot and came across one of those big bugs that tries to ram into you. Tried to drill it to death but it didn't end up in my favour!
There are plenty of bricks and rebar around to do the job, but I thought it would be a nice interaction to have, unless it's already a thing and it was just a skill issue on my part.
- Had a weird death in pipeworks, I was in a room that has the monkey bars close to the top and going across the side of the room. I tried to jump from it while parallel to it and got instantly bounced backwards and fell.
Maybe I just hit the ceiling and it looked weird, I'll check next time I'm there again.