Sorry you didn't like the game! I agree that the movement especially is very slow - movement speeds are hard in pixel art games since there's not a ton you can pick from, and I definitely chose wrong for this game.
I might push out a patch that fixes a few of your issues (namely, I'll make the player always run, set the text skip button to the same as the interact one, and show controls on startup). I was already working on a small bug-fix patch, so I can quickly add these things in. It should probably be out in a few days.
I think I've definitely gotten better in the years since I made this; this was one of my first games :)