Thank you for your interest and feedback!
We were short on time during the polishing stage, so we didn't have enough time to add too many sound effects, or any music. I actually did make a music track for the game, but it ended up being kept out of the release. This will hopefully be a bigger focus to us for future games that follow this kind of style.
There is actually a way to do vertical camera smoothing in 3D quite easily, I think. I just didn't find the time to make it yet. I will attempt to implement vertical camera smoothing for our newer games. (It shouldn't be too hard for me to do)
Also, your alternative ramp solution is actually quite a popular and convenient solution (I think Valve uses this method for most stairs in their Source engine), but our level designer doesn't typically implement that.
And no, there's no secret with the benches. Sorry for the red herring.
Again, thank you very much for your valuable feedback! We will be considering all of these things for future games of ours.
~akhcade (Lead Programmer)