There are full blown animated scenes, but only as Game Over conditions. The actual artwork for the game is actually mindblowingly good. So the "sprite scenes" don't really look like old school pixelated stuff, if that was what you were thinking. Some of the Game Over screens are really sexy, but they're censored (although someone seems to have recently provided the de-censored files).
The game progresses super slowly, but there are times when they shove out a lot of content. For example, I originally played v0.38, I think early last year, then eventually played v0.44 in mid-December. The gap between those versions was basically two zones, which while big, due to the fast paced platforming nature of the game, both could probably be finished in like 5 minutes each.
The game is worth playing now, because I don't think it's going to get more advanced (sadly). It's not a perfect Salt & Sanctuary clone, but it works as a nice distraction. Also, saves carry over to the new versions, so you shouldn't lose any progress on updates. I think a few weeks back, someone here mentioned that a bunch of content for the game would be shoveled out this year, but who knows how accurate that is.
I haven't played past v0.44, but the menu locking has always been a bug. Basically, whatever you use in the menu suddenly becomes your current locked controls. Just use the mouse to click on "Back" or some other option. Switching to another "section" of the menu "resets" the menu controls to the default of keyboard or controller settings.
Also, you can use a controller with this game, but your better off using
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, to forcibly bind the chosen keyboard inputs to your controller inputs, because the game is weird about connections and tampering.
I'm guessing that's the ladder that crashes through the floor after you pull the lever there? Yeah, your supposed to be able to get up there. That takes you up to the Save Point, and I believe that fuzzy white orb is the Black Key you need to open up the gate directly to the right of where your standing. Basically, that area is the end of the zone, and that ladder acts as a shortcut to the Save Point, so you can recover before moving onto the next zone.
In v0.44 that works fine, but I guess there's a glitch there now?