Thanks for playing! Yeah, I wasn't sure how floaty to make the ki controls, and probably ended up leaning too heavily on that.
By the first checkpoint, do you mean the one in front of the acid pool with the two gates? That particular puzzle is supposed to require the player to use conservation of momentum - specifically, if you're moving in normal mode (either vertically or horizontally), some of that momentum will get transferred to the ki burst when you press space, allowing it to go further than it could if you started from a standstill. I struggled with figuring out a good way to teach this, though. :\ In theory, the puzzle prior to that could illustrate this, because you're essentially using the same principle to reach the two buttons, but I don't think it worked as a teaching aid because most players probably just paid attention to the jump height and didn't notice the momentum increase.
Thanks for playing!