You hit the nail on the head. There were wide chunks of this dungeon that I wanted to go back and address because they were empty/even boring, but I took so much time making the whole thing work that I didn’t get to do that second pass and put interest into every room. On hindsight the lives/continues system was more of a habit than a requirement. I am from the 90’s school of thought that the player has to be hazed and challenged, but making people walk through empty rooms or mindlessly repeat certain tasks is not a good way to achieve that. I should have done some kind of password or save system as well - it would have been easily implemented but wasn’t possible in the “time crunch” I experienced.
Thank you for your feedback. You are very insightful when offering answers.