Hello! Thank you for your detailed reply!
First of all, you are not too rough. This is the kind of feedback that I value the most as a game designer, and I am very happy that you took the time to write such a well written review. You make some really strong points, all of which I agree with myself! I would like to address some of the things you've written, not as a way of defending myself, but more to explain my thoughts behind my choices perhaps!
But you know, you don't have to read it if you don't care ;)
Your first nail on the head is that yes, I get way too ambitious when making games, and they often go way out of scope. This is no exception.
I will say, the thing's I bought online was the level assets, and then I downloaded the sound effects and music. The scope of the game was already very big on the Monday, so I was in fact panicking a little bit about how to get the level done in time (and yes, this should have been the point of returning to the notebook and do something else). The level I used in the game is not done by me at all. It's actually the default level that came with the pack (with a few minor tweaks to block off exits that I didn't want). But you are definitely right in that if you scrap that from the game you are left with a very very basic game.
As for no consequences for getting caught, It was a hard decision to make. I knew that the AI was hard, so it felt bad for me to punish the player for losing to an AI that was hard to escape from. They're slightly faster than the player, and they were supposed to be easier to get rid of (but I have no idea why haha) so rather have you lose everything I just gave the scrap collected a penalty (something that I realized I should've communicated more clearly).
The exposure thing is a rookie mistake :S I haven't used the light system much. I would've spent more time on many things but I work a full time job so I only had like 2-4 hours per day to work.
Once again, thank you so much for your review. I will carry this with me to the next game jam. Not a lot of people spend this time on game jam games and I am honoured that you did that for mine. Thank you.