First off, thanks for your reply!
I get that the surprise and shock are intended, and I'm perfectly fine with that. The issue I'm having is that after running into the bad ending, I had no clue how to avoid it the next time around - mostly because the key choice in question seemingly had a positive outcome, so I didn't suspect it at all to make that much of a difference. And sure, thanks to the skip option it's not that big of a deal to brute-force your way through the entire game, but it's not particularly fun because it removes player agency.
I'm not saying that the consequences of each choice should be telegraphed or anything, but I believe a few subtle hints can go a long way to prevent playthroughs from turning into mere guessing games.
Again though, apart from that I really like your game, and I'm excited to see what's next!