I appreciate to play level by level for the harder levels and had no need to play it in order or to progress without getting back to menu. So I could conveniently try out different levels and look which one looks most promising to solve. I imagine doing Hopeless in order as something extremely tough.

Being barred from levels one could solve seems not always optimal though that applies more to Rubix' unlocking suggestion (though I can understand the wish for the motivating powers of achievements).

I often have looked as well through the screenshots if a level looks inviting to play (at my current mood) and it was good that no order was "forced" upon me.

For a creator and especially for community packs it doesn't seem an easy task to get a natural order of levels as another point.

For easy/moderate levels that one can solve in short time, yeah, there it seems more fast paced to progress without getting back to menu but at least in my opinion that doesn't apply for hard levels where you sit at for quite some time.

However, it leaves the question behind: the fact that the pencil is being treated as 1 object has been decided - i.e. it is a product of human decision and system-making. It it not, therefore, a truth.

Yeah it is an interesting question what we accept as distinct objects, we usually don't treat random parts of space-time as one object. But how we count is a matter of units I think, pencil is another unit than the lead core.

What is a truth for you, what entities are able of being true or false? One approach would be that (only (certain)) sentences can be true or false.
Imagine there is exactly one pencil lying on the table at a certain point. Would you see the sentence: "There is exactly one pencil on the table at that certain point." as true or as false or as neither? Is such a sentence for you able to be true or false?

I think the philosophical (ontological/metaphysical) question whether numbers or sets exist revolves around the question whether abstract objects exists. Abstract objects are such outside of space-time or outside the material world. At least sets as entities are not part of the material world in that sense.

- No release rate control - or if there is, it isn't obvious

There is indeed no variable Release Rate/Spawn Interval anymore in Lix. I think the runner skill is meant to be a partial substitute.
There is a thread with reasons for the culling.

- Always going back to the level select screen breaks game flow quite a bit, although I suppose there can be positives for this in that it reminds you to take a break, and is good for playing single levels within packs.

If I remember correctly there was another player who wished to progress without getting back to menu as well for a better flow.

I marked all unread posts since last visit as read and that magically fixed the issue for me.

Due to lack of space on smaller resolutions level information or stats get overwritten by the stats for the current game (LastGameStats), see issue #395, issue #324.

My suggestion to solve that is to write the current stats on the space of the preview window. The window has quite some space and you don't need the preview shortly after you've played the level. Furthermore there the recent stats could catch more attention I think though unsure.

Ah, I understand, I had the issue wrongly remembered.

Currently traps can't be (visually) mirrored or rotated. Hatches can be mirrored for different orientation.
There can be a usecase for such operations on traps, especially if they are not symmetrical. Furthermore it can probably avoid special cases for these objects.

As a sidenote there is an issue (#273) that mirroring of gadgets can lead to them moving if they have certain meassures.