Thanks for playing and the analysis!
On the bit about coins not disappearing, this one’s intentional because the alternative was to just make every coin disappear, including the ones mid-flight, which I wasn’t a fan of. The added depth you described was unintentional, but cool nonetheless.
Forgot to mention ingame (but added it to the game’s actual page at some point), but the player can be focused by holding shift.
Agreed on how small the player’s item collect radius is, it should’ve been bigger.
I was planning on making the coins fuel a bomb and/or autoshield for the player, but that never made it in.