Everything's cool - many pleasant textures and colors; except those palmtrees again - they seem like fading. And I aggree that spiky thing is confusing - it has spikes yet bonuses are put over it.

Objects on the background should have a smaller contrast and a greater brightness."The characters are not mixing up with the backgrounds anymore."I disagree. The spiky thing seems to be close enough to the player's depth and could be misread as a deadly object.

Shading is good at some points, but i.e. the grass on bg is really poorly shaded. The farther edge on the cliffs could use AA. Keep to the smooth AA and simplistic shades.