Thanks for playing and the feedback!
The yellow bar is actually the health bar and the player's light, and it works like a timer. Candles are there to refill it and also act as checkpoints. The light depletes over time, and yes, flaring it speeds up the depletion.
When the bar goes to 0, the player should respawn at the latest checkpoint, but sometimes it just respawns them at their current position. I couldn't figure out why. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Maybe a race condition is happening in the code. I'm not sure :(
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Ah ok, that makes more sense now, i guess that what was happening to me, that i was respawning in my current position. I'm trying to think if i triggered a checkpoint before or not, maybe it happens when there is no previous checkpoint to move the play back to, and instead default to the current position? just a thought.