Great idea to weave a warioware type game into the theme, lovely visuals too!
Any kind of visual flare to indicate winning or losing a minigame would have gone a long way to lessen any confusion over paying attention to if I did/did not lose a heart.
Was there consideration to make a mouse the input over WASD? There were some games I would lose because I couldn't move to where I needed to be in time.
I like the cutscene of ascending stairs between the games to show progress, I'd recommend the middle frame have the stairs visually shifted downwards a bit as at first it could be perceived that the stairs were cracking rather than symbolic of us moving up them!