Thanks for playing.
Glad you liked the look and feel even if it was a bit on the tricky side.
I do think that was a bad call with the keys in retrosepct.
I wanted the use of items to be universal, andthe process of equiping and using them to be something ingrained from early on. Also, there were some plans for Keys to be limited, so you'd have to pick which doors you used them on, and the long process was kind of a safe-guard making the player think more about it. And so they wouldn't be used accidentally.
Like in this section, you eventually find the blue key, and that can be used on one of two doors. Depening on which you use it on, you can get an additional piece of armour and another weapon early, wich can help with exploration. (Though since I never made more than two enemies, it ended up being a bit pointless.)
But yeah, I probably would just asign Keys to Up if I were to do it over. Especially since it meant players often went into fights with no weapon equipped because of it.
On the controls, I used to play quite a lot of freeware games that used that layout, so that's why I favour it. Though yeah, I think next time I'll include some alt options like you guys did.