I'm glad you liked it! I actually had a way more ambitious grid-based game in mind when I started the jam before realizing that I wouldn't have enough time. I didn't want to waste the code I wrote though, so I repurposed it for the simplest strategy game I could think of: chess. I'm happy I did too, it was nice having a lot of time to focus on polish!
I totally agree with you on the bot, especially with COVID, offering only local multiplayer does mean a lot of people can't enjoy it as an actual game. I quickly realized though, as you mentioned, a bot would've taken way more programming than I had time for. I thought about online multiplayer too, but since I haven't implemented that before I didn't want to create a possible security vulnerability.