really great work on this, crazy how much you were able to get in there. certainly has more crammed in here than any other game in the jam that i've seen. it seems you had a custom engine, is it specifically for metroidvanias? i also imagine this isn't your first rodeo in making a game either, how and what sort of planning did you do (i know that's a big question, feel free to skip it)? the game itself feels pretty good. one thing i'll mention is that there is a reason games like this usually force you to press jump while crouching to escape a 2 way platform and there are a lot of encounters here that it would've benefited being able to choose whether i wanted to crouch or go through a platform. i liked the story! it was fun getting bits of it as i explored. the whole thing reminded me a lot of environmental station alpha, although the movement in esa is much tighter and more fun (because it was made over like a year and not 30 days lol). the art very much gets the job done but something i noticed in this and a lot of jam entries (including my own in some places) was an issue with visual hierarchy. the doors were the main thing, even with an animation they still sort of didn't really read as doorways. i think something more solid and with a very high contrast would work better for those. these are nit picks though, really great job all around! i'd be surprised if you didn't win.
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Thanks for the feedback, and glad you enjoyed it!
Using the jump button in addition to crouching to go down one-way platform is an interesting idea, I will consider it. ;)
My engine is modular, so while I do have a module dedicated to metroidvanias, I've also built a Zelda-like, a JRPG and even some 3D games with it. I plan to write up a detailed post-mortem at a later date, explaining my process and describing my tools, but in the meantime I do talk a bit about the engine here if you're interested.