Thank you!! (:
I totally agree, initially I thought the items should make this super forgiving but I failed to account that players might take longer due to figuring out the game / map lol
Linearity is by design! while making this game I considered the idea of making it procedurally generated but figured it'd be too much effort to make it work and be fun for a 3 day jam, so it ended up linear. I think it was a good decision because it let me put more effort into having a coherent and (hopefully) fun map, and makes it so the items give the map a metroidvania-like progression where some items are needed to progress. If it was more open ended, more players might've gotten lost :<< it would be fun to explore a mechanic like this in a less linear map in a future game though