The narrative structure is really what glues these puzzles together. It makes the shortness of some of the levels intentional for story pacing, and the introduction of new mechanics relevant in more than a gameplay sense. If anything I think you can take this farther to teach mechanics through what one might expect from reading the intro dialogue (You do a little of that already, this isn't a criticism more of a supplementary idea). The only issue I ran into is that I couldn't tell which enemies would run after the buddy or only run after me, I think they had the same sprite. That only was an issue in one level though. Great tiny game!