The artist has given up on this project, but I have not. Work will continue and I will redouble my efforts on this game.
I made the mistake of showing him the prototype too early. The prototype was already an addicting game. I had and still have some grand plans for the game. Including unlimited level generation, levels with thousands of branching stages, lives, continues, checkpoints, power-ups, ghost replays, and live multiplayer.
The artist wanted to take an good prototype and make it into a great flash game, but not as replayable, addictive, deep, or social network friendly, as I want to, which will turn a good prototype into an amazing game.
This is probably for the best anyways, as I was wasting too much time trying to convince him that features are a good idea and people like games with features like multiplayer and deep gameplay via a simple interface.