Thanks so much for playing!! The minimalistic style was more a practical choice than an artistic one, given that I'm solo and have zero artistic ability (haha). I'm glad it worked for you! The sound design was very fun to work with as well; I've touched on it a bit in other comments, so I won't talk about it at length here, but it was a very fun learning experience, and I'm glad it turned out as well as it did. The visual effects for the main character are actually a product of the physics system I used (QuarkPhysics by erayzesen), so I can't take any credit there.
As for some of the issues you mentioned: the level design was one of the last things implemented, and basically just consisted of me cloning the floor platform and placing it at various angles around the game world haha. The pit section was a pretty ham-fisted way of implementing the original idea I had for the world to change as you progressed as a result of your interactions with it; I immediately wished I hadn't included it about 15 minutes after submitting when one of my family members played through it and was confused by the exact same thing. I apologize for any wasted time at that section :)
As for "Z"...the one and only reason for that is that the only dialogue-based game I've played on PC is Undertale, which uses "Z" for all interactions. I use exclusively arrow keys, so I never stopped to consider how inconvenient it would be to use Z if you opted for WASD controls. And it would have been so easy to also include "E" or "Q" in addition...I have no logical/design explanation here, it was just a complete and total brain fart lol
Anyways, thanks again for playing, and for both the critique and encouragement!! It's very helpful to see where other people experience issues, as the way I interact with the game is much, much different than the way other people do (which I think goes for most projects).