thanks for going back and for saying it straight. the 'AI slop red zone' read lands. the purple gradient and the over-explaining text were the defaults i reached for, and that's the tell: wherever i wasn't deciding, a default decided for me.
the journey note is the one that matters. run two only means something if the ghost is legible enough that you want it back, and right now you die, see a ghost, and there's no reason to care. that's my design, not the art style.
'the game so full of itself it's amusing' is the line i keep coming back to. a game that owns being AI reads better than one embarrassed of it. don't know if that's my next build yet.
if you take a third run: what did the ghost do to you right as you died?