Thanks for the kind words and detailed feedback! Glad you liked it enough to stick with it, even though it ended up being a little more difficult than I realized lol. The ending is a bit rushed for sure, I agree that it could stand to be more satisfying.
Btw the pillar breaks after a minute into the start of each loop, reaching it in under a minute makes it climbable. You might've heard thunder and a change in the lighting when it breaks, though I checked back on it and realized I messed up on the sound design a bit (you can't really hear it if you're too far away from it, and there were supposed to be additional thunderstorm sounds leading up to it but I accidentally didn't include those).