Thanks for the feedback and I totally agree with your criticisms! I had a couple of ideas on how to tie the different mechanics together but ran out of time. As for the game's difficulty I erred on the side of caution and made the par times pretty forgiving, but in case you'd like more of a challenge I uploaded my best times in the screenshot section, most of which should be pretty tough to beat :)
Thanks you for playing and for writing such a thorough reply, it means a lot!