Thanks for the feedback and for playing! We're glad you enjoyed the aspect of being thrown into the game without too much understanding since we understand quite a few people prefer some direction given to them. Of course as you said, there was a good bit of polish we could still add to it and maybe try to make is better recieved by more people even with the some of the "figure it out yourself" aspect.
We did have plans for shadow monsters! They would've looked like flowing wolf things that chase the player if they were in the dark instead of having the meter fill up. Unfortunately we scraped the idea because of time and fear of an unbalanced game with that feature, but its good to know that it would have conceptually fit in since you bring it up. Thanks again!