Thanks.
Soft locking - Yes player can waste water cans, mushrooms, balls and get stuck. I think it's part of difficulty of the game. But I understand that it could be annoying at the end of the level have to restart all progress. I will definitely add checkpoint system.
Auto-select - That is a good idea. Then the game could be much faster.
One other way to solve soft locking would be to detect the soft lock (detect the player fell in a hole they can't get out for example) and show "Press R to Restart". I know you can already restart through the menu, but it wasn't immediately obvious that I messed up and should reset.
I don't know if you ever played on an Amiga or other vintage computers. On the Amiga there's a game called "Enemy" who works like that. When you fail a mission or soft locks yourself you can keep playing but can't complete the level, the game shows the prompt to restart telling the player he can't complete the level. It too has a checkpoint system, so restarting always goes back to that checkpoint.
