Cheers! I'm not the dev of Downwell no haha, but the game itself is definitely a huge inspiration. Personally I just really loved the style and wanted to do my take on it.
The low resolution + having limited colors made it very efficient to make art, which is great since I made the game alone. However to my surprise, I also learned a lot about readability & designing memorable locations which turned out be really difficult.
It also helped shed some light with new game design approaches I haven't touched before, which are in this case skills with dual purposes (combo, synergy with attacks etc. with the use of one button)
Not sure this was what you asked for when you said hearing about the influence but there you go haha