Hey, thanks for the detailed writeup. You might have a point w.r.t. the upwards kick, it might be worth seeing what it's like with the stalling properties removed. I also am about to fix the wallsliding so it doesn't switch to the dedicated animation unless the wall jump ability is unlocked.
Could you clarify about the backwards dash and the double jumps? You mentioned it a couple times and all I know is that there's sometimes an issue with stick snapback in controllers, but if you're actually dashing backwards when you don't intend to I'll look into that.
The horizontal climbing early-game is also something I've noticed. I think one of the problems in addition to the lack of vertical mobilty options, is the fact that the player has to move backwards a bit to avoid overshooting platforms since I tend to make the gaps shorter than they need to be. That's a relatively easy polish fix. I also might go in and add more jump pistons and bounce blocks, or some other way to get easy verticality.
Also what did you mean by the platforms being different from each other? I know analog jumping makes some jumps feel shorter if you let go of the jump button, but if it feels wrong I can tweak the thresholds.
Again, thanks for the detailed comments, things like these are very helpful.