Hello there!
I am the developer of Sodhara, first of all thanks for investing time into checking out this small offering, I really appreciate it! Let me address the issues you mentioned:
- this game started out as a Udemy tutorial so some stuff are leftovers from that time, keyboard mapping being one of them... As there were more pressing issues, I didn't bother that much with the key bindings (moreso due to me being used to it already), but that is something I want to fix in the future. I would be very grateful if you would be so kind as to give tips on what a good keyboard layout would be - I am playing a lot on controllers these days so I kinda lost sense for the keyboard;
- character sprites are free assets made by Ansimuz and I agree, those are great. I myself am only starting to dabble in pixel art, my quality is very poor at the moment I would not manage to complete my entry if I were to do the art as well - that is something I am planning to address in the future;
- I have already updated the map to show much more of the level geography, it will be available in the v0.4.1 that I am releasing shortly;
- the idea with crawl spaces is to pick up the morph ball (I am copying Metroid after all) and then the character will morph into a ball when climbing directly into the tunnel - much as is it is the case in Metroid Dread for example.
There are problems in terms of being able to land in places and not get out - a crude workaround for the game jam entry purpose is the X binding which hurts (and ultimately kills) the player, letting you respawn at start of the area. If that doesn't help, one should start a new game - not ideal, but time was an issue (I already squeezed an unreal amount of time during April to make this all work).
Once again, thank you for your time and I am kindly asking for any feedback you are willing to provide as that info is precious.