@Thenar (or any others) – let me know how the “easier” difficulty feels to you. Is it a smoother curve? Are there still large difficulty jumps? What levels give you trouble?
I think the next Pico-8 release is going to have global highscore tables, and I’ll likely update this game to support them. I think I may make something closer to the “easier” mode the default mode, and then players can jump to the harder mode when easier ramps up too slowly for them, but I don’t have much feedback on easier right now (and I think it’s not highlighted well enough in the menu for players to change that value when they’re having trouble).