100% correct. Itch's voting system seems like it could be improved for sure.. I was a bit worried about this stuff myself during the voting period. Also, I do entirely respect your opinion on my game! The general idea was not super creative, there were a few other games with quite similar mechanics.. but I tried to make up for that with my characters and level design and such, which clearly some people agreed with! I do believe some of my winning was up to pure luck, since I clearly never had any review bombers, which I know bc there were actually no 1 star reviews at all (which is insane to me too).
First of all, congratulations. I don't want to sound like a sore loser. It's just odd for several reasons.
You seem to be a chill dude and I don't think you rigged or cheated, because of how you reacted, cheaters tend to be aggresive and defensive when you call them out, and you seem to be surprised and accepting of other people's opinions so I'd attribute the high ranking to what you said, a bit of deserved ratings (I mean your game is not BAD it's just average for me) some luck, and the fact that there's a weird guy going around super obsessed with your game and writing essays and defending it even more than their own game that they even admit they called their friends and told them to play/vote for yours... so I guess thank him?
I've played like 80 games and at least 30 were the same as yours with a twist. So many people went for the "die/respawn/repeat" mechanic that after a while I was genuinely fed up with them, like people didn't bother to think beyond the obvious first idea they came up with. Even I came up with that and said "no, I can't do it, it's too obvious" so I'm really surprised that the #1 spot goes to a game with that idea. Again, no hate intended, I'm not mad, I'm more like disappointed because under your game there were so many original ideas and great executions that I think deserved the #1... so I don't know anymore.
If your game ranked like 50-40 I'd be like "yeah, ok, makes sense, decent puzzle platformer" and that's it but even you were surprised of the results (so I must be a bit right about something if even you admit you weren't expecting this). This just highlights how weird (bad?) the itch's voting system is, if you get 1-star bombed by one person you fall like 80 places, so without a proper jury the voting it's mostly rolling dices and seeing who got the double sixes.
In any case, seize the moment, I mean probably Jack will play your game, so maybe take the time to polish it a bit, add music, polish the transitions (I found it to be unpolished when one character dies the other just starts walking without warning because I'm holding the A/D key and that made me lose a few times) probably add some glow, some particle effects...
Again, sorry for the rant, congratulations, I genuinely hope you seize the spotlight. Good luck!