I've found that last minute caffeine rush to be my usual reaction to jam deadlines, even with a few years programming and several jams now lol. My team didn't really get a chance to play test before the deadline either except to see if it worked.
I never would have guessed that was a sprite ID checker, but that makes a lot of sense now that you've told me. I'm used to using Unity's tag system. I'm curious, is there a standard or common engine used for Pico-8 games?