Always nice to see a PICO-8 game :)
Cool concept; I only got the normal ending- couldn’t master the battling!
I did find the controls a little mind bending; somehow the ‘turn/forward/back’ didn’t quite gel and I was forever trying to do ‘up/down/left/right’. I wonder if you could maintain the turning in place and use the (probably more intuitive?) top-down control scheme by having the character face the direction in the first frame, and start moving in the second. That way a light touch will turn, and a hold will walk.
Good game though :D