Hi there, been following this project in the background. Sad to hear what occurred, I agree with your decision to make this split of the game (if I understand that correctly as to what is occurring) so you can financially continue. This market is highly competitive as you said thus I do suggest you try to branch out to other platforms along side Itchio via Steam or DLsite if possible. I even suggest personally posting on some pirate forums that have Devs working there as some allow for Devs to enforce rules such as no pirate links within the first 30 days. Hopefully if you do so you'll end up with gaining more attention especially as a good H-action side-scroller game is hard to come by.
I personally plan to await a full release before purchasing the game myself and will continue to watch and wait for it. (it was hard to read this all due to the background having black bits in it, so I suggest adding a white middle bit or something so the black text is on something contrasting it)
PS the image I think is broken that you're trying to show.
Rat