You nailed it on the head, I think the idea pitch to the team was "Super Monkey Dice" then Dan went and built a quick and dirty prototype while we were discussing other ideas and then once we saw it we just went for it. Super cool you picked up on that.
I agree that the movement could be dialed in, I think what we were avoiding was creating a character with "Toad in Mario Kart" precision of control, but also not icy movement, could use some dialing in for sure.