Thanks for all this great feedback and playing! I'll address (by that I mean either concede or cope lol) some points here.
- Jump inputs being eaten - yeah I didn't optimize the movement well it was sort of one and done when I first made the movement. I should probably focus on having some better movement next time.
- The whole left and jump not being constant thing was intentional - it allows a LOT of momentum to be built up and you can still make the jump from rope to rope in that climb section.
- Hollow Knight's movement was not as much an inspiration as it was an afterthought unless I was subconsciously inspired which I don't rule out since HK is one of the best games I've ever played.
- Pixel sizes - I designed the character within 2 hours of submission deadline and then I put them in the game and realized that the proportions made some jumps impossible and was within 2 hours so no time to really redesign so S T R E T C H it was. Lack of animation is for the same reason. Surprisingly not too many people commented on that.
- I used CPUParticles2D node because I didn't really know which to choose and I didn't want anything super crazy - I set the horizontal gravity to 0 manually and set the horizontal velocity to a flat value which matched the speed I wanted them to go.