For some reason, the forums stopped notifying me about replies here. Gah!
Perhaps the series of errors here is leaving home without sufficient platforms, not having double jump and/or ride the lightning... and then not watching your step! 
I agree. Especially considering that there is a coffer of platforms in the settlement, so if you ever run low, you can get more there.
Exactly. By the same token, there are bosses that will one-hit kill you if you approach them unprepared. Don't have an upgraded character, don't have good spells and/or enchants to deal with them, etc? That's your string of mistakes right there.
What I mean about not having twitch-type mistakes be the cause of death is this: in Super Meat Boy, for instance, there is no way to prepare. You run and jump past spinning blades that kill you if you touch them. Therefore, if you slip up even slightly, you just have to do it again, and there's no way you can "prepare" to make it easier. You just have to get better at the game, that's all there is to it. And that works really well for SMB, but that's not what AVWW is about.
By the same token, the old warp system was really game-breakingly horrible for a lot of reasons, because it made certain failure states too easy to avoid. Went out unprepared? No worries, as long as you have a warp potion! Thus "being prepared" consisted entirely of: 1) having warp potions, and 2) having enough health that things wouldn't kill you before you could pop a warp potion. That really wasn't what I was going for at all.
Hopefully that makes more sense.
