A really cool Idea with pretty good execution.
What I may recommend for later builds if you continue this is a quick reset button. Sometimes if you mess up it can take a bit until you hit the next spikes or monster depending on how the level is build.
I also found that between retries the character's momentum is carried over from their death, e.g. still flying upwards from a jump (killed me once by having the character go into the nearby spikes).