I exagerated a bit by saying 2 hours, but it was an excruciatingly long time to pull off a couple of the solutions simply because there was too much trial and error involved. Thrusting you into the game gives you no explanation of game mechanics at all, you're left to just figure them out on your own. So when it came to the sands of time styled levels (particularly the one where you have to bait and switch on a rabbit) I was left trying over and over to get the timing right. It was annoying and not fun.
As to why I thought I would get power-ups, the reason is simple. If you come across something you need to collect in a game, and it is just out of reach with no way of climbing higher to drop down to it, what is the first conclusion many people would come to? Well, since games have had power-ups since even before the 8-bit era, Occam's Razor says that the solution is something that lets you jump higher. The solution being that a platform appears after you collect other pieces is certainly inventive, but I think having an outline where the platform is supposed to appear would have made that obvious without actually telling the player how to go about getting the piece. You see the outline, assume a platform shows up at some point, and come back later to see if you activated it. Easy, and frustration free.
Don't get me wrong here, I did like that you were thrown into the game, but I didn't like that dick-all was explained aside from movement controls. Maybe I've gotten lazy from getting spoon fed direction in games for too long, but I really felt that I could do with at least a little more direction than was provided. Perhaps a 'frequency of hints' options would have been a good idea; let those that want to fumble around in the dark do so, but give a little helping hand to those that need it. I mean the developer wants people to play the game all the way through right? Seems like an extra option to make everyone happy would have helped accomplish that.
Truth be told I was unaware that the game was done by a single person. With that being the case, the game did turn out quite nice. The controls and physics are rather polished and function as one would expect. However overall, I found the game unpolished due to the lack of what I consider staple features in games (especially PC games). Once I find the time I'll go back and play through again now that I know more of what to expect, I never would have quit in the first place had I had any of this information available. Thanks.