This was actually a pretty interesting take on the theme and it's genuinely really cool to see games which have a narrative focus to them, that's something you don't see all that often in game jams. As others mentioned, I also abused the spikes method a bit and used that to my advantage quite a bit due to struggling with the hitboxes a fair amount.
Despite that though, I think you did a great job of taking a unique approach to the theme and put some effort into getting some narrative points in there and I do agree with frinkly about their points about why people may have missed the theme incorporation and I'm honestly really glad to see you taking the feedback well, that's honestly the most important part of a game jam :) I'll keep my eye on this for a future post jam update and see how you expand on this!