- Difficulty Spike: The mod has two. The first is once Madeline activates the fans, turning the level into a tricky Gusty Glade that will test the player's ability to platform in various wind effects. The second happens in the latter half of the chapter, when crates start to appear. Suddenly, clearing rooms becomes as much about platforming as it is about keeping the crates intact, carrying them across the room, and throwing them onto switches to activate stage elements piece by piece.
- Narm: The dialogue at the start of the mod is a little stilted and has very few contractions, making the characters sound almost robotic. So the conversation between Madeline and Theo, meant to show her mental state after losing Badeline, almost feels like a poorly acted play.
Theo: I may not be Part of You but we can talk through this. No need to do anything rushed.
Madeline: You do not understand! A literal Part of Me is gone. I am incomplete. Broken.
Theo: Madeline, don't say such things. You are just under a lot of stress right now.
Madeline: I need to do this. I will call you later. Goodbye.
- Play the Game, Skip the Story: As far as Celeste mods go, Shrouded Thoughts is a very polished work gameplay-wise, especially for its time. It not only offers a totally new location in the Old Factory, but introduces tons of mechanics that wouldn't seem out of place with the original game at all, like the Boom Boxes and Dash Negators. By comparison, the story is fairly bare-bones and leaves a lot to be desired.
- Scrappy Mechanic: For players of Celeste who didn't like carrying Theo in Chapter 5 or the Jellyfish in Chapter 9, the grabbable crates in the latter half of the level are more of the same, and they're used throughout the latter half of the level in a series of mandatory puzzles. The Rust Berry, a fairly tantalizing secret right at the start of the chapter, requires Madeline to push her crate-carrying skills to the limit long before they're even introduced in the gameplay proper, which might require replaying the beginning just to get it.
- That One Sidequest: There's a secret 26th strawberry hidden in Shrouded Thoughts, the Rust Berry. Obtaining it requires Madeline to disable an electric barrier by taking a crate from the very start of the Old Factory across several rooms laden with bottomless pits and other hazards, all so she can throw it into a spike-lined alcove behind a fake wall. Several Advanced Movement Techniques are required, including neutral jumping (a type of wall jump), superdashing, regrabbing the crate, and performing a neutral drop (dropping an item straight down instead of throwing it). To make matters worse, one mistake will smash the crate, killing Madeline instantly and sending her back to the start of the intended route.
