you may find it helpful to know that you can effectively grind/farm in the boss levels. just don't kill the boss, and minions come indefinitel, so you can get as much exp and as many drops as you like. then just buy LOADS of hp potions early on using the money you get from this, and the game becomes very easy...
nice simple game. bit annoying that i got to 250k ft without damage, and got the in game achievement (Ace III or something like that), but got no badge. had to try a few more times to do it again and actually have the badge awarded..
i didn't even know about the sandpiles until finishing the badge and coming to comment. even avoiding the sandbags, this took me under 5 minutes. maybe 3 runs and i'd finished it?
There appears to be a trick to handling the hydras(at least i found this to be the case), if you jump in the air while attacking, you get hit/knocked down less, and do more damage cumulatively.
Thank you for this game, the trilobite cave sidequest made it quite a lot more challenging and enjoyable, and your sense of humour contributes to it a lot as well =)