Thank you for your kind words!
Retro simplicity is definitely the name of the game for the PICO-8 engine. Being limited to two action buttons was probably the most challenging design-wise.
Being able to lock one‘s direction was an improvement over the Zelda 1 combat this game takes so much inspiration from, but I decided on a dodge on the other button early on and it felt „more wrong“ to place the lock there.
Though I understand your point very much and would take some time to design the controls for another game of this style or a major update to this one.
On a semi-related note: When you get to the webwood part in the story you unlock a new move - the bee in the starting room will tell you how to use it.
(If you have enough pollen/energy, you can now attack while dodging to perform a charge attack that deals a lot of damage and will cut right through the web blocking your way.)