Hello, I will be happy to see a early prototype of your game at the end of the GameJam. I think i will give you a link for a special Jam made to give a seconde chance to a game at the end of this Jam. I had the same troubles with my previous game, my time travel machine accepted to travel in Time 10 minutes before the deadline (the thematic was "Time Travel") but i published it in Time. So don't resign. I want to see your game.
I will be short to have an interesting prototype before the end of this Jam too.
I suppose that you already know how to use arrays in Unity and C# . However maybe you could see how to use "Singletons" and "DontDestroyOnLoad" if you want to keep track of your datas beetween scenes . Or create a GameManager Script( a well know technic) and put this on an EmptyObject on the scene. At the begin of this video he explains shortly what are all the technics to make a management system then his own management technic. It seems a good beginning for you.