yoooo! thank you so much! i was actually trying to get ahold of you because one of my jam partners really wanted me to have you on my stream where i interview developers about their games and dev process. i'd love to have you on if you're available!
but yes, the low kick is for dispatching the pig enemies which stab you in large numbers if they reach you. the snap ability is only available at Heat 4 onward and burns half a Heat meter, which is a little oppressive, but the longer you hold it, you have a wider AOE that autokills everything in its radius, which is the most consistent way of killing the birds. you can technically kill them with a well-timed jump, and fully-charged dashes connecting with an enemy actually ramps you up with an automatic jump that can be acted out of, but yeah, the tutorialization was an unfortunate casualty of the crunch.
a boss comes out at Heat 8, which was also a last-minute overtuned decision, because it's actually pretty hard to get there until you really lock in the combat. but it's bugged and the ending is inaccessible. but it's floating around here in the comments.
thank you so much for playing my game, yours looks really awesome and your website is insanely slick, so the compliment means a lot to me as the director and lead dev!