Turns out it was a quirk of playing on SD desktop mode - bumpers did not register, instead I needed to move the left stick left to right to move the flippers - it was awful 😅also touching right stick would register as mouse input and cursor would show up on the screen. Then adding to my confusion I misread an item description that said ‘put a curse’ as ‘put a cursor on an enemy’ 😂I was like ‘wtf how am I supposed to do that while playing pinball simultaneously?’ 😅
It was my first attempt at playing itch.io game on SD, now I’ve learned my lesson - in game mode it works as you described. It’s a perfect Steam Deck game though, and now with better controls I can finally beat my high score 😅