I remember being frustrated with this game when I first encountered it years ago. I managed to pick it up and finish it recently, and figured I'd say my two cents about it even though it's unlikely to be seen or to be of any use.
I enjoy the story and am intrigued by the narrator's inability to find "home" even though he was/is clearly very attached to his mother. I wonder why that is? When he was younger he spoke of how other children readily drew their own parents and houses, but he couldn't think of anything to draw. And yet he also spoke of how afraid he was to let his mother leave his sight around that age...I wonder if there's something else we're not seeing; how reliable is this narrator, anyway? After all, in the "candle" and "feather" endings, you never see the truth behind the fire, unlike in the "alarm clock" ending.
Gameplay is and was the thing that frustrates me most, but I managed to get through it after a bit of retrying. After growing more familiar with the mechanics, it doesn't feel as difficult as it used to. At some point I was under the impression that the alarm clock doesn't allow you to use torch checkpoints, but I later found out it does, you only get reset to the beginning if you die by running out of time. This definitely contributed to some frustration, but I also don't see how this could have been conveyed in the instructions of the game; I feel that it's the sort of thing you're supposed to find out while playing. I personally would've liked a way to fast forward to each level's respective pickup area when possible, but I can also recognize how that isn't feasible (for example, with the planetarium level, where they're all spread out). I've seen comments elsewhere on how some kind of radar pointing to the pickups could be of use, and I agree something like that could be nice for retries.
Overall, I will be thinking about this game for a while...
