CLASSROOM AND BOOKS
Remember that these aren't meant to be a real test of the player's like. Searching Skills.
It's just meant to make the player spend more time in a place and make them put themselves in compromising positions that make them paranoid.
Which means you can have multiple solutions / multiple duplicates of the object they need to find. Potentially remove ones they haven't found once they've found enough, or let them pick them up for no effect.
Breaking the window was something I thought about, but like. There are chairs, and desks, and the drawer of the teacher's desk. You don't need a hammer to break a window.
That said, I might have stuck around long enough to find the hammer if it hadn't been a playtest build (I.e. if I was certain the solution hadn't glitched or something. I thought maybe I was supposed to have the flashlight and the candles in the distance were a hint to use that.)
I checked and it looks like it's saved immediately after the accident. I won't play through it now since there's no suspense and it'll just feel like busywork. I'll play through it some other time it updates instead.
CYCLING
I think the tapping is fine if they don't need to press that quickly. Maybe. For the first section it gives somewhat more speed per cap (not as much as the last section), and you don't need to tap faster than like once per one or two seconds. Feels like a middling gear and you're taking it slow and safe. And then in the last section it's a high gear and you're incautious. (you may have a better impression of how cycling feels / what rate you pedal. I used to bike to high school, but that was an e-bike and like 8 years ago.)
For turning.
Maybe the protagonist is distracted before the first turn and almost overshoots the route home? And then they stop, comment on that, and turn really sharply. Now the player knows they're not in control of turning.
The second time they need to turn, they do it in an arc like they do now, with no popup about turning. Maybe while there's a distracting text popup going so the player may get startled that they've left the pavement. Maybe a car stops for them as they're crossing the road.
Basically I don't think it's a problem that they don't control the cycling direction, but it is a problem that the game says "turn left" and makes them check.