Thanks for the feedback man! I definitely would have added more enemies and/or events to the game if I had more time, perhaps a boss enemy or something of that nature. Game art is another big weak point of mine as a programmer with little experience in 2D graphics. I'm gonna focus on that for next time, to at least imitate an art style.
Good catch on the exploit! I somehow never discovered it in all my cumulative time playtesting, lol. Like you mentioned, there doesn't seem to be an easy fix for it besides a major change to the game mechanics, (although the moving pedestal idea sounds promising to me.)