On the movement points
1. I just pushed an update like AutomonDev suggested where throttle is controlled by how far your mouse is from the ship; let me know how it feels if you get the chance to try it.
2. Having a continuous trail sounds like a good idea, if I can automate figuring out the start and end of a shape. I don't know how to do that yet so it's currently an implementation limitation. I'll note to look into it when I'm trying to improve the glyph recognition in general
My motivation was literally to find a game these mechanics work in, so you're right about that. I think what's really needed for it to work is some deeper interplay between how you try to draw symbols and other parts of the game like dodging, enemy attack behaviors, etc., but the current demo doesn't really achieve this. I'm not really convinced that drawing this way has to be clumsy though, since I was able to get used to it after a while - maybe it needs a better onboarding process from when people start out to where they feel comfortable with it.