The rope climb is very VERY unintuitive for now. I didn't even realize you can do that until the second level forced me to by slowly killing me in the pit. The controls don't help. You have to throw the rope only by pressing Z in mid-air, then hold Up and release the rope. You can jump by pressing both Z and Up Arrow, but you only can throw the rope by pressing Z exclusively and use the Up key to fling yourself higher. I don't see much point in jumping by pressing Up in the first place. It's just not comfortable to use.
The character shouldn't be controllable in the cutscenes. I accidentally threw myself in the pit during the second boss and couldn't get back, because I was under the bridge and the dialog boxes was covering the screen.
After that I died and lost my last life. Was it my fault? Yes. Did it feel fair? Absolutely not. And I simply didn't want to redo the level after it. And I didn't. Nothing of value was gain by adding a live system.
I think it's time to implement sounds to the game before adding more new content. The game in general needs a lot of polish before moving on onto something completely new.