I'm mostly posting this on the off chance anyone else tries to run this horrible trainwreck of a game.

Today, while practicing for a NASA pre-stream, I discovered the existence of a run button - it's bound to Shift by default but you can change it in the Unity options menu - and causes you to move at roughly twice the speed. While it doesn't explain all of the inconsistent glitches in the game (namely how sometimes you'll get super-momentum coming off bounce pads) it does make the game significantly faster. My first run shaved 43 seconds off the previous WR run - and that was without really being acclimated to the run button and taking an unnecessary death.

One mystery still remains in the controls menu, which is why there are several buttons listed under single-letter identifiers that don't seem to do anything. I'll probably chalk it up to shovelware.