Wow, I didn't think I'd actually do it. Even though I feel like calling this an alpha version, and a WIP is a safety net for my mental health.
This would be the accomplishment of taking the next step, going from pet projects that never leave my desktop to having something that I can point to and know I've released publicly.

I want to stress, mostly for myself, what worked for my workflow.

A good enough mentality,

Structured Work time

Hello World functions

First, making sure I did not spend lots of time on anything in particular. Finding something that slowed down progress like trying to make a certain set up work was ditched.  Spending a day on a single asset is not good enough when there's a whole game that needs to hold that asset. A handful of boxes representing walls will do more than a highly detailed picture.

Work time had to be limited to one room or stage or challenge at a time. I would work on a single jump, a hard challenge or goal, and work backwards. I would walk away for awhile to let my mind rest, come back and play the new section and repeat this until I felt the individual part was clean, and I would walk away. The next day I'd take that work and make it fit into the rest of the project. I found whenever I spent more than a few hours grinding away, the work got considerably sloppy.

And last, my favorite technique for rapid testing is the Hello World functionality. Want to add damage triggers? Hello world at every step before adding more code. Basically output testing every part of the function. "If this collides with the player print yes" then "If this signal emits print hello," where each print statement was the next bit of code I would write. If the signal emitted add a function to the Player code and print if it was heard. Each minor step made sure I never broke the code trying to add a damage function all at once without making sure each part worked. Adding a signal, and functions, and sounds bites all at once would have been an unsolvable mess.

Anyway, those are the best Thoughts I've had so far. I'm just glad to be done.