I think it very literally is just the player moves too slow. There's not a lot you can do to spruce up the level design when the player only moves a few tiles a second, and the distribution of points of interest felt perfectly fine to me in most cases. Adjusting the player speed is also just a really easy thing to do so I wouldn't be afraid of playing around with it and seeing if it feels better at a faster speed. It doesn't need to be drastically faster, just a moderate increase can really change the effect it has.