Thanks for the feedback. I very much appreciate anyone sharing what they felt in response to playing my game, good or bad.
I'll respond to a few of your points that interested me. I don't really want to debate what good design principles for games are, but I'd be happy to share what I think about some of the things I put in the game that you commented on:
1. Some jump distances/heights are very intentionally ambiguous to encourage you to try and fail. On the three specific instances you mentioned:
- In the room where you get the Lizard of Bounce, I want you to try and jump for that coin, and you did.
- On the right side of the bridge, you can make that jump, but it leads only to a non-essential secret. It's okay and normal/intended for you to fail here too. There's also a nearby hint to encourage the attempt.
- In the room with the Lizard of Heat, the platforms have been moved around slightly to make getting through there smoother. That particular jump that you're calling misleading is a compromise with some other constraints, but in the final version its impact is mitigated a little bit by other changes around it.
2. The Lizard of Bounce's boots are not for jumping, they are for bouncing. Pressing A to jump is actually unrelated to the bounce; pressing them at the same time does nothing special.
There are probably a lot more places to play around with it in the full game than the demo, but I do hope you'd eventually be able to figure out how it works with some experimentation. ...and if not there's 5 other lizards you can play with. I don't expect people to figure out everything immediately, or in some specific linear order. You can get to almost all places in the world with any of the Lizards.
3. I'm surprised by your closing comment, because the demo actually has two bosses, and three ways to reach an end screen. I think this video covers only about 1/3 of the demo.
I was also surprised at the point where you declared yourself stuck and reset. You
can get past that blue frog, but the easier way to escape was to go down in the next room over. I think resetting is a valid option for returning to the start, if you want to use it, but I've intentionally left an "easy" way to get back out of every area in the game, even if it's not immediately obvious.
In the final version there's also a map that might help you orient yourself.
4. You asked a lot of questions about things like what the coins do, or what does that text mean. I'm glad to have succeeded at raising that question in your mind.
The idea that the text is a password is an interesting thought, but it is not a password; also the passwords in the final version will be numbers rather than letters anyway.
The Lizard of Knowledge can do a lot more in the final version too. Many creatures (e.g. the Panda) can talk, that couldn't in the demo.
Edit: 5. You mentioned a password being a cost saving measure. In this case that is not why I chose this. This game does not have a significant amount of saved state, by design, and I think a battery backed save would actually be inappropriate. The password is only 5 digits long (3-bits each), and takes only seconds to enter. If I thought a battery would improve the game, I would add that cost.