That.... was pretty god damn awesome. Think I'll have to play it again, see if I can get a different ending. Very cool. Thanks for making this.
Oh, one fedback: The movement at the start in the garden felt... lurchy. Like I kept pausing, lagging etc.
Didn't have that problem elsewhere, maybe it is just me, but figured I'd mention it, since you guys were asking for feedback
Other notes/feedbacks: needing to press "Z" to walk out of the occult room felt really unintuitive. If there's a door, pressing Z feels fine, but when its just a "fade to black", It feels like walking at it hard enough should work.
Similarly, if I have the theatre key, I feel like Kat should automatically use it to unlock the door (instead of just commenting "Hey, I have the key", and then forcing player to use inventory.
Now.... maybe there are important design reasons you did things this way, but those are just some rando thoughts to make the game smoother to play.
Does the PLAYER need to wait 5 minutes before burning the hair, or is the flashback sequence already covering that? If it is, maybe have Kat mention "and, that's five minutes!" so that players know. Otherwise, being the cautious Practioner that I am, I'm going to sit there waiting.
Also, because the game really emphasizes the importance of taking multiple paths at the start, its really frustrating when Kat refuses to do things.
In particular: Once I have the hairpin, she refuses to open mystery classroom off on the west side (at least, so far). Obviously you have finite game making resources, but having the door THERE, and the lockpick in hand, and the character refuses is disapointing. Maybe remove the door if it doesn't do anything? ...or make it less mysterious? ("Oh, this is history class, that's boring").
Similarly, when I use the lighter on the black ooze, Kat talks about it maybe being combustable, and then refuses to light it ("I shouldn't"). Even if you don't want to code anything, just having her TRY to light it (possibly after some encouragement), and then go "Oh... guess its not flamable" is still more satisfying, cause it feels like the world, not the character is blocking you. Or have something happen! Maybe you just get blown up and die! I don't know, just tossing ideas around.
EDIT EDIT:
Nevermind- most of this stuff actually works, I just had to get the ordering right. I'm still looking for the 4th protective runestone and a way to use 9000 sticks of chalk.