I really respect the understanding shown by Matt Thorson and Noel Berry for the mind of someone playing a game like this: in many different levels I would miss a jump, just by a few milliseconds of inaccurate reflexes, and end up landing on spikes, or complete a difficult to master section but my brain would be too slow to process what had just happened and I'd find myself on a disappearing platform, to fall on yet more spikes. This show how carefully and precise the design process was, everything in this was crafted to the most minuscule pixel so that the one clear solution to solve a level and perform the perfect sequence of jumps would be sculpted into the player's muscle memory, readying them for what has to come.

Anyway, 983 deaths later I still don't understand the appeal of challenging games.