Okay, I finally managed to get ahold of the controls now. Apparently, it's possible to collect the red power orb early by wall jumping even if you don't have any power orbs collected, which caused me to get softlocked on my first playthrough. The wall jumping mechanic is awkward, though; I'm still not used to sliding against a wall and using the up arrow to jump instead of using the space bar to do so.
Hope I get a hang of it when I do another playthrough of the game.