Considering you are working under a deadline, I think you made the right decision. The Nano ESP32 is a very nice board so I'm sure you'll end up finding other projects to use it in.
I should warn you that, even with an official Nano, there is a good chance that if you subject it to the same conditions as the cheap Nano derivative boards, it is likely the same result of physical damage will occur.
Hopefully you already identified and resolved the problem in the project circuit, as I believe was discussed in your other topic: