Thanks for playing! Yea, we spent WAY too much time on the lore and what made it into v1.0 was barely scratching the surface. We had to narrow our scope quite a bit so I'm really happy that you could sense the bigger story that we weren't able to delve into much.
A common feedback was that it was easy to get lost. I thought that the various zones were distinct enough but it's clear that I think we need more landmarks and, as you said, tile variety to ensure folks don't get too lost. We also are considering adding a mini-map which I think could help as well.
The solar dash is a controversial power-up since most people have said it's OP due to not having enough downsides, so your comment about it feeling too risky to use is very interesting. We originally had an MP system planned but scrapped it due to time and just played around with the casting delay to try to make it useful in countering Flyer dashes and the Boss dash/bolts, but we didn't spend any time on the post-dash, so thanks for that comment.
Agree on the controls. We did spend a lot of time dialing things in but many people had the same comment to reduce slipperiness and make the jump not momentum dependent (seemed like a fun idea at the time! :)).
Thanks again for playing!