It is "failure is progress" in the way that every time you launch you will collect items like the fish that apply to the penguin the next time you launch so that the next time the stats of the penguin are higher and you can reach a higher distance.
Viewing post in Penguin Slider jam comments
In that case, i feel like the game doesn't communicate this to the player enough. Personally i felt very confused when playing as they didn't even do much to help. My best distances were always the first for some reason? The clock doesn't add enough time to really notice a difference, and the fish, i'm still not sure what they do? Does it have to do something with the inconsistent jumps in mid-air?
Oh, and there are some tiling issues in the backgrounds.
I think you have an interesting idea there, but it's poorly communicated to the player so it's hard to even grasp.