Really? I find Pico-8 is barely playable with the keyboard. Are you using a bluetooth controller?

Would have been a hundred times better if they'd included a gameboy style dpad on the left for arrow keys and 2 proper buttons on the right

Still better than capacitive touch display based controls :) and I simply love playing with pico-8 on my commute from/to the office!

I plug a usb keyboard in, but more for coding. I don't mind playing the less twitchy stuff on the built in keyboard.