This was such a cool mechanic, I enjoyed this! It reminds me of the game Getting Over It where you can easily lose a lot of progress, which feels frustrating but fair.
I do wish there wasn't a time limit, though, as the core mechanic does take a while to get the hang of. I also wish I had access to the later two levels to play without beating it. Maybe for game jams, it would be best to give players access to all of the levels, just so people don't feel that they need to master the game to see all you have to offer. But great job on a cool concept!