Hard not to likethis game. I'm obviously biased to love a submission where the countdown is the good-guy. The mechanics came quickly enough, I didn't particularly need any tutorial help.
The actual gameplay came quite punishing to me! I couldn't even barely side-scrape a spike, or hang a split second at the edge of a jump. I think you'd get an immediate triple boost in fun by smartening up some of these gameplay-feel tweaks. They can have a huge impact not on making a game "easier", but by letting a player better see on screen what they intended to do.
The protagonist is just a treat, and as mentioned below, the menu screens show real cohesion with the rest of the non-asset art. Big Cheese! It also felt like all the level designs had been well thought out and planned, which helps to keep the game feeling like your takeshi's castle for me to beat.