Wow, thank you <3. I'm definitely continuing to work on it. I'm going to enter it into the Super Metroidvania Month that goes until Feb and plan/hope to have it completed for that. Please follow so you can get updates and play it in full. (also, if you'd like to do an early play test that would be great!).
In terms of the gating issue, another player said something similar and I do agree. I've already made some (unpublished) changes to how that works and I think it is much better and leans into the "exploring the unknown" theme better.