It took me a while to understand the controls, but I eventually got it. I like the way it makes you feel like you barely have control, even though it's perfectly fair. My main critique is that using the thrust drains your oxygen quickly, while your oxygen normally drains extremely slowly, which means that the optimal strategy is generally to drift from goal to goal at a slow speed, which is time-consuming.
I could think of a few potential ways to make the game more frantic: One is to adjust the ratios to punish the player less for boosting and more for taking a long time, and another is to reward the player for beating each level quickly, making them evaluate risk vs. reward of trying to beat the level with just enough oxygen after boosting excessively to save time.