Thanks Lerg! The feedback you have here echoes a lot of what I've heard before. I feel like most of these issues have been addressed or at least improved in the current build, which in addition to not being available anywhere just yet won't replace the version being judged for the jam cuz them's the rules.
I did not learn Godot over the course of this project, I've been learning the engine for several months now and still am learning it, to be honest.
One thing that won't change about the project even as it hopefully gets finished and makes its way to Steam is the hard limit of nine lives per game with no one-ups. Nine lives and nine levels. I will continue working to make it harder to die and so that when you do die, it doesn't feel "cheap" and you don't feel cheated. I've already added an autosave function and will soon implement a proper gameover rather than the joke now where it literally just quits you out of the game when you run out of lives.