Thank you very much for your suggestions. There is control for the players jump, albeit significantly reduced compared to walking control. This was intentional as I wanted jumping to be risky. Wall clinging is connected to whether you're holding the directional pad while against the wall you are "moving" to. If you are holding neither the jump button nor the directional pad, AL should fall. This allows the player to jump off the wall by simply pressing the jump button again (and cling to any adjacent wall by simply holding the pad in that direction, and subsequently jumping off that was, etc etc).
For my future platformers, I'll give a hair more jump control.
Again... Thank you.