The difficulty ramping up really fast is due to two things: The time limit of the jam, and whether the gameplay should be taught to the player in a top down manner or a bottom up manner. By that I mean, do we give them freedom and let them experiment with all 6 skills first? Or do we limit their movement as much as we can so that they start with only 2 skills to worry about.
We found out while designing levels that more freedom meant more difficulty. So to make the game not as punishing, we designed the levels (at least levels 1 and 2) in a way where there is only 1 possible solution to every puzzle.