Hi, I'm glade your liking this, did you check out the Ti-83 skin, i included it for nostalgic reasons :)
About your questions, the controls are fairly hard coded i'm not sure if i could easily add optional controls, it might be possible but not sure need to look into it.
About the block animation thats little bit more difficult, as the game does not directly skip to next place when pressing a direction or picking up a block but has some mechanics to make it move to these locations, so i could do some little animations. This is part of the core of the game and also requires it with the way i programmed it in as there are events when players or boxes arrive on a new spot. This is harder than implementing the optional controls.
Still i hope you can enjoy the current implemention as well, and in case you did not know this version was based on the Soleau software blockman game, so it contains more levels than the Ti-83 version had. I also wonder what the reaction of your friends will be :)
PS. If you ever happen to create your own levels let me know i can potentially include them in a new update of the game