Tryptamine Windows, Mac game

Currently I am working on Vivid Garden (or my applications for University) most of the time but I certainly still spend some time on this project.

Until now, the game was pretty much like most platformers these days: you play through the first level to unlock the second one and so on, and on the title screen you can afterwards select the stages you unlocked to play them again and beat your highscore and collect things you missed and stuff.

What I'm now thinking about is to make this much more linear, like with Super Mario Bros. for the NES.
You always start at level 1 and have to play everything from the start again when you ran out of lives.
The main reason for this is, that I do not plan (or do not have the time) to create hundreds of levels. Maybe there will be 5 or 15 levels. When you start at the very beginning every time you are game over, the playtime certainly gets much longer.

To make this a little more interesting I'm thinking about a health bar that is full when you start playing the game but that will never get filled up again and it will keep its value even when you get to the next level.

This, of course is a completely different approach than what it was like till now. Not that it was just not linear, but it was like: touch that spike and you immediately die and loose one life and have to start again from the beginning of that level you are in.

I think that I will adjust everything to fit the new approach and then give out a demo to some people to test it and give me some feedback on it. So if you read through this whole text, you can send me a message or leave me a comment and you will be one of those happy people.