this is awesome and wholesome and you brought great joy to me because I was all like "man this sucks and is garbage and smelly" and you were all like "woah dude this is freaking sick and awesome" so my expectations have been inverted. thank you :)
I knew about this too! I thought it was a neat thing to find so I left it in! I almost made an optional level that required you to do it but decided against it.
Level 0 isn't ever actually locked to begin with, I just didn't consider that you could exit the level without completing it but I think beating the level and pressing Escape take about the same level of effort.
I didn't notice the other things, thanks for letting me know :)
I knew about this bug beforehand and since I'm pretty sure it doesn't negatively impact any of the levels I left it for people to be like hehehe if they find it.
This is so good actually! Solving things is very satisfying and all the interactions between the creatures are so good! Its kinda like playing a multiplayer game by yourself