I adore this game. I love the minimalist set-up; I was truly just thinking the other day that I was getting tired of the weird attempts authors were undergoing to shoehorn stories into their games. While that does often works, also often it's just--awkward. I was thinking about the simple games, "HEre's you, that stuff's bad, go collect these things." And here's "In Mali Sommi". :D
I also like the ability to control the paddle-thing with different speeds, but I wish one could control the green circle like that, too. Sometimes it just moves too fast for precision; I'll have the paddle aimed more or less where I want, but have to spend some time fighting to get the circle in the right position.
After that, I have to agree with the notion of checkpoints. That would really have helped this game a lot.