Thanks for taking the time to type up these suggestions. I need to dig in there and make some of these improvements at some point.
The button label thing is one of the PICO-8 conventions; those symbols are built-in glyphs that refer to the first button or second button on the virtual console, which for desktop web browsers are mapped to X and C, but on other devices, they will be something else, such as a button added to the screen on mobile or actual physical buttons on PICO-8 enabled hardware. In other words, if I were to say "Press C to play," that wouldn't make sense when the game is played in non-keyboard contexts. (I probably should make a note of this in the game's instructions, though, for people not familiar with PICO-8.)
Anyway, thanks for playing, and good job slaying the dragon!