thanks for the feedback.... yeah I should have taken more inspiration for controls from games that have worked this all out before, it is easy to forget on your 1000th playthrough that the silly control scheme you originally created won't be second nature, to everyone else - but It seems to be a common complaint!
Hopefully the fact that death never put you back very far meant it wasn't too frustrating? After the jam voting ends I am going to do a tidy up and will try and fix the control scheme to something more standard, (and then get annoyed when I forget trying to playtest it!)