first of : sorry for not replying sooner , I just overlooked this
personally I find the idea of it being a rogue lite slightly less appealing than it being a metroidvania , this is to a big part just my preference , because when I played games like dead cells or enter the gungeon , I played through them once fairly quickly ( dead cells took me just two tries to kill the final boss , there was a lot of luck involved ) and after I finished them I just couldnt bring myself to playing these things anymore because I knew , all I would find would be useless because the final boss is already beaten once , most times developers add more secret bosses to the game after its realiese but thats the same thing over again ,
In metroidvanias I spend usually way more time not only because they are longer , but also because I replay them very often , the key difference is that a game like hollow knight , dark souls or super metroid is so well designed and allowes for different strategies every time while the level architecture stays the same . after beating a rouge lite I always feel like there less variance in level design , because it feels very samey all the do to its random generation .
However especially in the case of your game I feel like the mechanics lend them self perfectly to a metroidvania and a rouge lite would harm them .
as you sad the idea of spilling blood all over the place to better move around is a perfect fit for exploring , every time you enter a new area you have to push against the boundaries of your domain so it gets somewhat like the ink mechanics of splatoon . I would double down on this aspect of the game , because its something I've never seen in this context and it impressed me a lot .
But of course its your game and you decide what to do with it and I have no right to tell you how it's done .
I can clearly see that you are a very skilled game designer and even if it would become a rouge like or rouge lite it will most certainly be a great one and I will keep follow the development of it .