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I found the gamepad favorable myself, once I got it implemented. and sound? Sound. The thorn in my side. I actually spent a great deal of time composing 8-bit midi music, designing sound effects, coding it all in, and such. It's funny, I have a deal of experience with sound design, but instead of that helping me, it just led me to be unsatisfied and annoyed by everything I created. One of those items on the to-do list that led to me getting uninspired with the project and working on other things, until eventually I scrapped sound all together and focused on what I had.
I agree with you about the controls, I think I know the steps I can take to tighten things up thanks to the feedback I've gotten from this awesome itch.io community.
I appreciate the time you took to play through the game and get to the end! It means a lot to see people playing this game! I'm glad I managed to stump you, at least for a little bit, on some of the levels :)