thanks for playing our game! and thank you for the review as well, these are some very fair critiques. the game is a bit of a mess in terms of game design and apologies for any frustration you may have experienced.
about the death timer, it's actually a bit of a holdover from our original idea for the deja vu theme, which was supposed to be a time-loop concept. the idea was to have certain elements in the point-and-click section be time-sensitive so the player would have to gradually learn the timings of puzzle elements over the course several playthroughs. unfortunately, we couldn't implement any of those ideas in time, so all that's left is the 5 minute death timer. the walls of text were also meant to serve as a challenge for the player; parse as much information as you can from a massive log of memories to aid you in your next playthrough. of course, the execution does leave a lot to be desired but it's something i definitely want to try fleshing out more in future though. hopefully without all the jank.
thank you for the kind words about the art and concept though, and thank you so much for giving our game a go!