Sorry that you found it to be difficult! If you "double-tap" R to restart, you will be reset back to the beginning of the game as an intentional feature for speedrunners, but they should work other than that.
The drifting on platforms is also intentional; you're really meant to "bunny hop" off of those to go straight past them. You actually have much more time to input a jump than you think because the inputs are buffered.
Thanks so much for trying the game and sharing your honest feedback!