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Viewing post in Replayed this game some more. Some more suggestions.
Then why not an extra joy? Getting out of bad luck situations at the cost of health is their precise function.
You can't give him a smart bomb because the one thing keeping you from using them, score, doesn't exist outside of stunting your upgrade progression.
And a parry or dodge roll would be disastrous because it would remove 90% of the need to position and manipulate enemies, or manage health. Japes is already barely affected by an amulet supposed to nullify him; we don't need him to turn into yet another character who can just block everything either.