I only fell once, right after the carrots I think it was. I face planted into the side of the rock. I found the trick was a running jump, almost fell down a couple more times but managed to avoid it. I didn't find it too hard once I got used to it making a good balance between challenging, but not maddening. Perfect for a jam game or an early level.
Since you are taking suggestions/looking to continue on it some, a few other ideas:
- For an easy mode, the jar slowly fills with water intentionally lagging behind your character (staying at checkpoint areas) so if you fall, you just swim to the nearest area making for a sort of checkpoint system removing any possibility of falling all the way back down.
- Hardcore mode, replace the water with lava or acid to match the theme of the specific level
- Add edge-hanging so those "almost made it" jumps are still doable but also you can intentionally plan levels around the idea of needing to "barely make it" for higher tension.
- Variant of that idea is adding wall-jumping to scale parallel walls.
- Rope swinging of some nature because who doesn't want to dodge obstacles while climbing up/down a rope while it's in motion or just go full Tarzan at some point?