As someone who used Nova for ... shit, feels like a decade, I was also concerned about this when switching (I heard Nova was sold to an ad company and was super sketchy) but after using Niagara Launcher for the past month, I realized Nova was more complex than I ever needed. I haven't tried Lawnchair yet, but don't be afraid of switching unless there's a hyper-specific feature you can't live without. Give another launcher a shot for a week and see if you're really missing Nova still!
I use Total Launcher, and it has this (and in fact you can swipe in 4 directions ⬆️⬇️⬅️➡️ rather than just the 2 that Nova offers).
Means that from my home screen I could, in theory, access 48 different apps/actions/shortcuts, as well as opening the 12 folders they represent. I use about 40 of them, but it's good to have space for more if I want it.
They were talking about Nova, not Lawnchair. Nova hasn't officially been abandoned, but they were purchased by a big data broker a few years ago, and just a few months ago Branch (Nova's owner) laid off almost all of the Nova Launcher development team.
I was on nova too. I tried a couple of launchers and settled on lawnchair. I like that it doesn't try and force a new way to interact with your icons and screens.
It hasn't the amount of flexibility of Nova, but I really didn't need all that, I just want a nice stable launcher I can set up and forget.