Thanks for playing, this feedback is extremely useful - especially so since it's coming from an expert of Jak and Daxter! Thanks so much for taking the time to detail your thoughts.
I'll make sure to go through each point and address them for the full game. I really want to get the movement to a much more improved state, and will approach level design more carefully. The unintuitive jump to get the collectables at the start was intentional but poorly communicated, so I'll make sure to distinguish between platforms and scene decoration more.
Hopefully with more things to do we can make the levels feel less empty and more focused. I can add a brightness slider, this level is indeed quite dark. Thanks for letting me know about the missing button sprite. There's a lot more to do and say, I'll just end this saying thanks again for playing and I'm glad you appreciated it enough to write such an in-depth review!
As for the lizard, lets just say you already have the reward... take that as a cryptic hint 🤔