Thanks to everyone that voted. Not really sure why my game did so badly, i'm putting it down to ribbing the new guy. Looking forward to the next one.

:)

A really cute game, the palette and music were will picked. It has a warm retro feeling reminding of the NES era. Was a fun little ride, thank you for creating it!

HTML5 version here

https://sparrowhawk666.itch.io/place-of-cacti-html5

Nice quirky little game, great art style and music :)

Loved the feel of the game! It was a bit too easy...or I just got lucky on my first play through. 

Nice idea. The perfect movement felt like a retro game.

(If you didn't want it to feel retro, you could add intertia easily by changing the main character to a rigidbody2d and use impulses for movement.)

Thanks both, working on uploading the HTML5 version. Wagshadow you can move diagonally and with the gamepad if you like.

I like that you have quite a few "life points" and don't have to restart whenever you hit a spike. Still a bit too hard for me, unfortunately. I also really missed being able to move diagonally. Good spin on the theme!