I still see the word "sticky" next to topics
Firstly, have you installed and activated the plugin? See the installation instructions for details.
Secondly, if the plugin is being reported as active, the template itself might be misbehaving, you will need to look for where the frontpage.php file is looking at topics - there will be a hard-coded 'sticky' text there. Swap that text for a call to the built-in bbPress function: <?php bb_topic_labels(); ?> that handles topic labelling, and things should work.
Can I use different icons?
Sure you can. In the bb-topic-icons directory, there's a icon-sets subdirectory. In future versions of the plugin, different icon sets will be installable by copying them to this directory, or via a plugin API. For now, take a look in the default icon-set - the four icon files live in that directory. Upload your own files, and in the bb-topic-icons.php file, change the filename constants and icon sizes if you need to.
Can I change the toolips?
If you want to change the text that is displayed, class.default-status-renderer.php is the file to look in - you will see a map that converts a given status value to the tooltip description.
If you want to change the CSS styling of the tooltips, take a look at bb-topic-icons.css for the various styles that are applied.