The "pictures" you're allowed to use (sprites that aren't the map, objects or system UI), must be explicitly set so if you want to render an integer as a picture you need 10 if statements per digit to select the right image. This has been resolved in re-release on Steam/etc, and also originally could be worked around using Cherry's PicPointer patch (which my project would've been impossible without).
All these complaints actually sound like good things to me, actually.
The platform has a very specific goal and it does not attempt to offer you a half-assed way to reach outside of that goal.
Like, what you just described should be accepted as "sprites can't be used to display numbers, that is not a feature of this engine", not "doing X is really hard".
These complaints sound like complaining about the difficulty in making an FPS on the Pico-8, or drawings in Microsoft Word. That's not what it's designed for.
I know the web has gotten us used to the idea that any platform can be hammered into whatever purpose we like, and so a document engine is now the frontend of all applications, but there's something to be said for having a clear, refined, limited purpose.
I've never used this engine, but I used to make ums maps in StarCraft 1. The programming language there was glorified outlook Mail Rules. You had to plan your gameplay around the capabilities of the platform, not the other way around.
The result was a lot of fantastic games that still felt like StarCraft.
The "pictures" you're allowed to use (sprites that aren't the map, objects or system UI), must be explicitly set so if you want to render an integer as a picture you need 10 if statements per digit to select the right image. This has been resolved in re-release on Steam/etc, and also originally could be worked around using Cherry's PicPointer patch (which my project would've been impossible without).