Interesting perspective, I see why a "hardcore" game could be especially frustrating in a game jam, where this game is just one of many submissions the player experiences, there really isn't too much motivation to make it to the end when it gets difficult.
We had initially hoped that a difficult game would have far more personality than an easy one, especially when the subject matter isn't necessarily unique. This was our way of expanding on the limits of what our game has to offer, in an ironically simple way.
Thanks for letting us know 🙏, we'll keep this in mind when we do another one of these jams.