Thanks for the in-depth feedback! I agree with all of this and unfortunately just didn't manage time well. I think it says I submitted 8 minutes before the deadline, haha 😅. Implementing the gamepad support was really a last priority and I didn't have time to execute it well. In retrospect, gamepad maybe should have been an earlier priority considering judging of the game jam is happening on itch with these home play sessions. It's a bit of a conundrum, where some design decisions that will benefit at home play will be rewarded by voters playing in this context, despite (in my eyes at least, as one of the organizers) the spirit of the jam constraints being aimed at curating games that will work best for the best in-person show. It's an interesting challenge for us to keep thinking about, as most players aren't considering this when playing at home, understandably.
Same situation with the aspect ratio. We are going to use a big portrait oriented TV on a stand and I hastily tried to restrict the itch build to windowed pixel dimensions that would fit inside most people's monitors. It's easy to see how flawed my quick resolution choice was now that I'm not typing in the numbers minutes before the deadline, and obviously I should have picked something less than 1080 px tall, and if I had more time, yeah, definitely should have supported widescreen with letterboxing. These are just the typical costs of not getting done in time to test things more thoroughly, an age-old time management lesson that is always hard (for me!) to learn from... 😜