This sounds like a really fun idea! Excited to see how you bring it to life.
This part of your post stood out to me: "One thing I definitely want to focus on with this game jam is trying to change my habit of trying to make things look nice before the actual gameplay portion is finished."
This is 100% something I've been running into and I need to change it, too. I could spend endless hours fiddling with color schemes and textures, which seems especially pointless for a game jam. If you've got any tips for dropping that habit, I'd love to hear them.