Thank you for your support Angevon!
Progress: Day 3
Today work advised that I take additional leave based on conversations we had. I'll be out of work until at least Wednesday. At least it means I'll have more time to work on the jam :) Today I worked through all the Godot tutorials and moved all my assets over from GMS 2 into a Godot project. I also got up and running with the last open-source version of Aesprite. I am really digging the new tool set and think I will be able to make the games I want to with Godot. On Thursday I'll be using the money I had ear-marked for a GMS 2 license for an Aesprite license.
My goal for tomorrow is to have a basic scene working in Godot with my brain moving around and shooting letters against the parallax background. I think if I can get that far I'll be in good shape to hit my larger goal of feature parody with the GMS 2 project by end of day Thursday.