Thanks for the feedback,
I did have an idea to put the red marker down near the floor for jumps, and a blue marker in the future for enemies that fly up and require Max to crouch, but that's on a to do list for now, we might eventually get to that.
The progress bar is indeed a bit hard to see, I can agree on that as well. I can put it in our to do list but our priority for now will be working hard on level 2.
We've tried to improve the movement and responsiveness a few times in the past, it is a lot faster than it used to be. We indeed still get some comments that it's still slow and clunky, but I think we will probably keep it like this, to keep some difficulty to the game, sorry.
I gave the mashing to escape a cooldown per mash on purpose, so you're stuck in the animations for at least a certain while. Also sticking to the rhythm in a calm/controlled fashion is rewarded over full speed mashing this way. I am sorry if that's what you'd prefer.