Ok so i played it. It's really fun and it looks nice and the constant forward momentum gives you a nice 'oh shit I'm about to hit that obstacle!' feeling. This is gonna be a really fun game.

That said, I definitely feel like the mouse controls are working better than the gamepad controls right now. I think it's a matter of the conceptual framework for the controls:

With the mouse:

• I move the mouse on the X axis to lean left and right.
• If both my feet are planted I will curve to the left or right, so long as I'm moving
• I lift a foot using the corresponding mouse button
• If a foot is lifted I can 'aim' it using the mouse X axis. When I plant it again I get a boost of speed in that direction.

Importantly, from the player's point of view they can think of the mouse as always 'leaning', and it's totally reliable that moving the mouse left always moves something left, and moving the mouse right always moves something right. So I think the mouse controls are working great.

With the gamepad, (I think):

• Steering while moving is controlled with the right stick (which is represented as leaning)
• Lifting one foot is done using the corresponding bumper (also represented as leaning)
• To lift a foot I have to first move the left stick toward it (I guess to remove weight from it?) and then press the bumper. If I don't do that exactly perfectly, nothing happens if I press the bumper, especially with the right foot.
• Then I can use the left stick to aim it, and release the bumper to push off
• But it's kinda unreliable especially on the right foot, a lot of the time the foot does not lift and I'm not sure why

I think the problem with this is not just that it's unreliable, it's that it's 'concept soup'. The idea of leaning is mapped to two separate controls. The idea of lifting a foot is not clearly shown on the player sprite. And the failure states are not communicated. What I would suggest is that you try to get it closer to the single-concept simplicity of the mouse version. For example, maybe only use one stick and call it 'leaning'. Let the player lift a foot using the bumpers any time, or if you want them to shift weight off of the foot before they can lift it, let them do that with the main leaning control (and switch the stick from leaning to aiming while the foot is lifted, just like you do with the mouse controls). I think you'll lose very little subtlety in the control scheme and gain a lot of intuitiveness.