Thank you for the feedback!
Movement probably felt inconsistent due to the fact that it’s slower while you’re over carpet. This was a near-last minute adjustment which was made to give the levels some added depth when traversing, but it may have ultimately been unwise.
I actually disagree about the chasing - I find stealth games where punishment is instantaneous to be frustrating. Widening the spectrum of failure allows for more tension and less frustration - at least, ideally. In practice, however, pathfinding cost me an immense amount of time to implement and frequently does not function - it’s the game’s weakest aspect and I’d likely have been better off dropping it entirely, but it’s hard to make backwards decisions when you’ve got so little time, hah.
While levels can be made unclearable in other ways, misaligned cycles shouldn’t ever cause this - after all, if they can be misaligned, they can be realigned. That said, this makes for a more tedious experience, so it’s still a problem.
Re: buggy pathfinding: yep.
Ultimately, time was a big limiting factor in expanding with new mechanics. I think I should have dropped moving NPCs early on - this would have saved me an immense amount of headache.