Thanks so much for the lovely comment!
I desperately wanted to be able to do a grand setpiece, but as you say—the best laid plans are nothing against jam timelines! I'm so glad that what I was trying to convey with the game seems to have come across—that's always a challenge. When your character controls are clunky, even if by design, that can be offputting and that isn't an unreasonable response! Same with the croak, it wouldn't be unreasonable to be given a mechanic that does nothing—if you ignore that it's meant to make you feel hopeless, that you weren't given the tools for this job.
You are, after all, just a frog.