I ended up enjoying this more than I expected to. I will admit that the game kind of saved itself due to a "bug" that lets you push the boulder around like as if it was a beach volleyball. That being said, there were subtle mechanics (intentional or not) that I found to be brilliant and kept me engaged as I slowly made up the pit. I really liked the sort of "resting points" scattered along the path that allowed you to lodge the boulder in place so that the player could scout out the area ahead or even take a breather. There were even couple of "resting points" where the only way to dislodge the boulder was to push it downhill which made for a very tense situation. Another part I really liked were the dark areas. It was very disorienting (in a good way) due to the lighting and overall very memorable. I do think that the game would have benefitted from the level design being less punishing since a hard reset to the start in my opinion doesn't work for this game as there are not many tricks to make your boulder go much faster. Even though I didn't get reset to the start for my playthrough*, I can imagine myself not wanting to go through the whole thing again after having fallen down halfway up. I think the level design should have it so that progress loss is only partial. Nevertheless, I very much enjoyed my time playing this game. Good job!
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Haha yeah I almost fixed that bug but that introduced even weirder behaviours for the boulder so I decided to keep it in the game (its not a bug its a feature xD). I think the jankiness really helps bring the game to life too. I also wanted the player to feel how Sisyphus must have felt from pushing the boulder up the hill only to lose all his progress when almost reaching the top so I added in many soft and hard resets along the way (maybe too many hard resets on hindsight). I'm glad you enjoyed it though, thanks for the feedback!