I think in a typical game, we would have provided the player with a limited but generous number of lives to start with. For a jam entry, where I don't expect people to restart anything, losing a life costs you 1000 points, while every HP at the end of the level (27HP max) gives you an extra 40 points per HP. Doing combos also provides bonus points on top of the enemies that you beat. So overall in this jam, the life system just impacts the score. It's pretty difficult to get above 5K points.
Thanks soo much for playing through it!