thanks so much for this indepth review! Ill reply in the order you commented.
We've gotten a lot of complaints about the 3rd area being difficult to explore, and that's on us for not providing a map. Our future projects that are similar to metroidvanias will attempt to have a map system, so thanks for that!
From what my designer told me, there are a total of 8 gloves, 2 of which are secret ones. You managed to find one of them!
The issue with distinguishing backgrounds/tiles/enemies is very prominent, and I agree with you completely that it is difficult to discern. One way we will try to avoid that in the future is by having a darker outline on things that can be interacted with, while making the background less prominent. Thanks for this bit of feedback!