Thanks a lot!
About the rate of defective missiles, it might be low, but they are not 100% random. I programmed something like every x rounds, drops 2 or 3 defective missiles. I thought, if every round (during a same life sub-level) the player gets defective missiles, than all the patterns that I created would have been for very little. I went for a curve of difficulty that makes both those missiles more rare (higher x) while also creating more complicated patterns, to balance the overall tension!
Maybe the last life might be the more problematic one, since I think the boss drops defective missiles once every 6 rounds. It is a lot of round, yes, and the patterns are the hardest one (it is the last life), but I ended up compensating for the high tension and the difficulty of catching some missiles by giving many extra lifes to the player during that round.
About losing lives when surrounding by zero lilypads, part of the game is the strategy of controlling the number of lilypads you have in play. You can easily get trapped, not because the level of randomness of the game made you trapped, but only because you decided to get in a bad situation. I understand that, in the first case, you losing a life might be frustrating, but, in the second case, it is blame on the player!
Last, about the music, yeah, sound is my weak suit in these projects. The soundtrack music is highly inspired in a much stronger music, that I tough would be ideal for the game. I really wanted to use such music, but I don't have the rights to it, so I had to work around the best I could!