Neat concept! I like the idea of the player potentially leveraging their own life against saving other characters, or risking getting weakened before avoiding enemies.
Man, the player runs really fast! It seems like the game should either enforce a time limit somehow, or make the hallways longer. I kept running into walls because I was so speedy. Maybe you could do something like, the player's health slowly depletes while they're in the maze, so they have to rush to save people/get out. I think the way it is right now, the best strategy is to go slow and look around corners. But it's really hard to go slow XD
Also, cute character design! :D