I'll admit I didn't give myself enough time to really code and debug and sound got cut for it, and it's still far from perfect on the code front. Several of the problems you mention are actually from this, you're actually supposed to have 2 HP that comes back when you get back to a light, and gets upgraded with the light bar. And I did consider check points but an issue with the dragons made the work a little harder than I thought was reasonable in the timeframe I had.
Thanks for your input! It's really good.