I definitely get the "preaching to the choir" bit, a lot of Metroidvania Month entries have been pretty creative. The most popular one is Pseudoregalia, and that one differentiates itself from the Metroidvania cliché in a lot of ways.
This game is a personal project. In a way, I do feel like I've been making the same game over and over again with slight variations for the past few years, and this was an attempt (which admittedly ended up a little rough due to the deadline) to conclude that chapter of my game developer journey. I think it's going to be a while until I make my next game, and it's probably not going to be a Metroidvania. I totally understand that this message is maybe a problematic one to send to a Metroidvania making competition, but I think I personally succeeded in what I wanted to achieve with it :)
Thank you for playing and offering feedback!