Cool entry and I love your take on the theme. Love the graphics and the mouth sounds for the scanning also, adorable!
I've had a read through other comments so I won't repeat anything that's been posted before me, except to offer different solutions, but I agree with a lot of what's there. I apologise in advance for the wall of text, but I love to give detailed feedback where I think I will help and might be useful as you said you're looking at post-jam work.
To that end:
1. Scanning - I think having a text caption on mouseover for scannable objects, for player to get instant feedback of "Here's something interesting/you should scan this" (I realise the green stick kinda does this but it's very subtle) and "Oh! It is currently scanning now, look at it go!" This text could have something like "Meatball - 0% scanned" and have it update as you scan it. In the instructions, it could be interpreted as "hold left click to scan objects for two seconds", as in you only need to scan for two seconds. But looking on the board when I died, I could see it was not nearly done, so a feedback on that mechanic is nice for the player to know if it's done, especially if that first time they are unaware there is a % instead of a yes/no scan (which I initially thought it was).
2. Level size/design - Technically, as the level designer you get to decide how big you want the level to be and how quickly one should be able to finish it. On the other hand, you have to make the player feel like it's worth the distance walked, even if you're tricking them a bit. For example a big wide open space with no other decoration, obstacle or goal along the way, will make it seem empty and "pointless" to do the walking, especially here, where the player is having to reset a LOT and do that "empty walking" all over again. However, if you narrow their path a bit, throw a couple of obstacles and a steady drip feed of "things to do/complete" along the way and all of a sudden you've got a start on a good level design that players can enjoy in exactly the same size space. You can even have some checkpoint teleport points after each successful scan, help eliminate more "empty walking".
3. Player Learning and Feedback - Consider how and where you're providing opportunities for the player to both learn the game (ie. the "figure it out" bit) and put in action what they learn, and how quickly you're allowing them to do that and have a sense of progress. A good part of this is above with the level design and also the scanner feedback, but also where they check the scannable object info and the fact that they can 1. only do this when they die and 2. they can't go back and check due to "dropping in". Consider maybe a HUD that reflect the 4 entities status on a sidebar/tooltray or similar for instant feedback for the player. Especially have that % in HUD for each entity, in case mouseover text is not a viable option for you.
Thanks for reading (if you made it this far) and know I say this with all the kindness in my heart for a fellow developer I wanna see thrive. ^_^