Huge thanks for the feedback! I'll probably revisit this later this week, and I'll definitely try to make it communicate your death better. Would you mind trying to describe in a bit more detail how the controls felt clunky, so that I can try to improve that too? I obviously played the game a lot during development and got very used to it, so I don't think I'm able to judge it as well myself. :)
well for starters when the person jumps onto a platform it immediately snaps camera to his position. This may feel a bit clunky so there are a few solutions. 1. wait a few seconds before making camera lock back onto him although may make game less fast in terms of gameplay 2. smoothly lerp camera into the player this will seem smooth but might also undermine the low res graphics. Do the same thing for when u die and also add a message or effect indicating that you have died.