Hi! Warning, incoming wall of text, no offense taken should you skip all of this:
The irony! I wanted to make a data driven event based game not too different from the amazing one you created for this jam, but I chickened out because it felt overly ambitious for the time frame! I resorted to a bite sized metroidvania, which is something I wanted to attempt for a long time. The initial design was inspired by Cinematronics' Freeze from 1984 (a pretty mediocre game I had fond memories of), but I wanted to give it a slight touch of Another World/Heart of Darkness/Oddworld kind of games. The game ended up being heavier on the platforming side compared to combat because the production cost of combat enemies was way higher (sprites+animations, AI code, sounds) compared to creating more platforming based challenges. If you're interested in this kind of games, let's make one some day :D or if you have any questions concerning the making of this one, feel free to hit me up, although from your work I can tell you are very competent already!
Anyways, I'm glad that some of my design intentions were perceived through the levels. The game is definitely more catered toward a niche audience (of more experienced videogame players), but I think it would have been a better design decision to redistribute the challenge between main path and optional paths with the goal of making it more widely enjoyable while staying true to the original vision and intended audience.
Thank you so much for your time. Your words are really encouraging and kind. I hope you will also keep making interesting and well crafted things!
Cheers