Thank you for the feedback! It wasn't necessary to make it harder but instead to limit the character's movements and give it more potential in the level design. Having only 8 directions forces the player to think of a path toward the goal instead of just clicking where they want to go, especially in the first few levels.
I was also thinking limiting the movements to 8 directions adds a bit of consistency in the context of speedrunning. You could argue it's a good or bad thing, but I prefer that to resetting a run because I clicked a couple pixels too far in a direction (I hate speedrunning point and click games haha 😅)