Thank you! I don't know if this is too on-the-nose, but I was thinking that obfuscating the controls might contribute to the feeling of "powerlessness".
To your other point - are you saying the item counter completely disappeared? One of my playtesters reported that bug and I thought I had resolved it for him. Any additional information you can provide would be helpful!
If that's the case then you could add an item that after pickup would give you ability to sprint and like other items would display the message "I can run now, but I'm still POWERLESS against this monster"
As for the bug; If the completion of the game (collecting all items) hides the text, that could be the case. Otherwise, I just paused the game for 30 secs and the GUI disappeared, there's not much information I can provide.
