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Thanks for trying it out!  I wanted to hint about mechanics and puzzles in addition to lore with the NPCs, like this guy:

The idea was that the player would then use this new mechanic demonstrated by the NPC immediately, but it was too subtle - the level should have been designed with more of these so a player could climb back up.  One thing about the eyes that may not be obvious by that point is that they do not stare directly at each other, so if there's a place where they would be, then something must be blocking their gaze.

In a level very soon after this, the explanation for what happens if one is caught by the eyes is played out by NPC conversation. Without spoiling too much, they fade away.

The idea with the puzzles was to tell the story as well - my thought was if someone wants to know more about the story, they could decipher it and as a reward make the platforming easier by disabling the eyes in that level.  One misstep there is having it be a 1-try puzzle; this can be circumvented by a bug that an early player found - hitting ESC to pause and resume resets the puzzle.  The very first puzzle is standalone: count the things, with an answer being a number.  The second level puzzle builds on that with the NPC hinting how to decipher it:

This infamous phrase is attributed to someone with famous a cipher named after them - and in particular - is encrypted by a number, which is why the first puzzle's number is relevant.   The third level is more obscure, but is also a common cipher used for example in ARGs.  A similar thing goes for the next couple of levels, though while no further types of ciphers are introduced afterwards, the chaining nature continues. Every 5 levels is an act, and the introductory puzzle (levels 1, 6, 11) is independent of the previous chain so it can be picked up.