Okay, have now played some more and finished writing up my thoughts!
I never did manage to get the “good” ending. I didn’t realize for a long time that the tape could be used to repair the hose; on my first playthrough I tried doing exactly that, but I didn’t realize it had actually had an effect, so I gave up on that avenue. Finally realizing that it was useful, though, I was all set for the good ending, but I got too impatient just sitting in the truck waiting and went to flip the pump switch to make it go faster… and got eaten. I restarted, determined to try again… and that time I got eaten just when I’d finished setting everything up. I didn’t have the motivation to do it all over again. I like that the tape can be used in two different, mutually exclusive ways; I’m so used to items in adventure game puzzles being single-use, so having two different options here and having to choose your trade-off, speed and leaks or leak-free and slow, is a nice design feature… but waiting without the pump switch is just too tedious.
On the plus side, unlike when I posted above, I now at least have an idea of how to get all the achievements (I figured out the highway one; you just have to make sure you’re on the dirt road or highway when you mutate), even if I don’t have the patience to actually acquire them all (I ended up with 12 of 16).
The UI has a sleekness to it, but it’s also rather disorienting. Others have already discussed this in detail, so I won’t belabor it, but will echo that it took me a bit to realize that you have to look at the truck from three different locations to get all the necessary items.
I enjoyed the spooky vibe and all the different possibilities for what you can do/what can happen. Those aspects reminded me of last year’s A Thing of Wretchedness, although here you have a concrete goal and more of a sense of stakes, which was nice. The glimpses of the world that we get are intriguing, and I enjoyed seeing the descriptions of the environment change once you become a mutant—honestly, I think the Mutant Jake endings were my favorites.