This was a lot of fun. I enjoyed your platform mechanics and you built some of your puzzles around them well. I had a hard time finding my last green gem but was able to find it in the end. Sound design was very nice as well. I was curious if the decision to not punish falling off made late or part of the core design from the start?
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I'm glad you got all the green gems! Thank you for the kind words. I played around with the idea of checkpoints, but I went with the super forgiving respawn system to be more welcoming to inexperienced players. That was decided early into the level design phase of development.
I'm still considering how lives/health can play a role to make the gameplay more engaging. I'd love to hear your ideas. I'm gonna continue polishing it up a bit post-jam.
I think the forgiving respawn was the right call especially for the game jam. I think health could play a bigger role with different enemies or hazards? I think in the present state I only took damage from the lava and when the birds fell on me. Were you planning on a 2nd level and ran out of time? The section after the portal seems like the start of another level but maybe it was meant as a final challenge.