You got some very fair points! We had ideas for all the upgrades visually but ended up vaulting some, thats why e.g. Flagellum doesn't have a sprite (it looked goofy)
Also you really shouldn't be losing progress when dying, but due to a bug the quickest fix was to delay data recovery, thats why you are gaining abilities over time (not ideal but does the job for this jam)
Thank you for your review :)