Yeah, the whole UI issue is on me. UI has always been something I fall back on when it comes to introducing game functionality, which is a habit I need to break. The shifting button definitely could’ve just been mapped to the spacebar, and the restart button probably didn’t need to be there at all as it was only a debug command for me to fix a bug i fixed before releasing the game.
As for the lack of SFX and the parts where the player goes off-screen, those were actually intentional design choices meant to set the game’s atmosphere. I mentioned it in the description, but it’s easy to miss. I wanted the world to feel a bit eerie and isolated: where the only sounds are ambient noises and music. Adding pickup sounds felt like it would pull the player out of that mood.
The off-screen parts work the same way. It’s a subtle psychological effect. It makes the world feel uncertain and eerie. It also (accidentally) added a touch of difficulty to those jumps, not that much just a little, which I ended up liking.