Thanks for playing and your feedback!
What kicked my butt was getting the carving mechanic to work, and as you probably saw it still had a good number of issues. I had a base idea of how I was going to do the task when I started, but the more I implemented the more I realized there were so many edge cased that the method I had in mind did not cover and as a result I basically spent the first 4 days of the jam working through reading a bunch of research paper and implementing various algorithms for handling the cutting and re-tessellation. I eventually hit a wall and realized I need to flush out the rest of the game or im just going to have a pumpkin sitting on a white box with a half broken carving mechanic. On my last day I was weighing the decision of working out my scoring system (which also was untested and needed to be implemented from scratch) or leave it more of a doodling game and flush out the polish in the environment. In my case I opted to flush out the environment more which I personally believe made a huge difference on the end feel of the game, especially considering the main mechanic was technically a bit broken. Lesson learned here is be careful when trying out new things that dont have a lot of existing examples and tutorials in the wild, especially in the context of a game jam. I learned a lot but it came at the expense of the gameplay itself.
In terms of having a creative mode, I did have an endless mode in the options panel where there were no timers and you could just carve to your own content. I suppose making that more visible (aka probably on the title screen) probably would have been the better way to go. Good point on the end screen, I could definitely have a toggle so you can turn off the auto-spin and allow the player to orient it for pictures.
Best luck on your future games as well!