Using this opportunity to develop a previous idea of yours is very clever, and even if your team doesn't use it for this project, I'm excited to see if come to fruition if you do decide to continue developing it on your own time. Even if the scope was too large for this years project, it may be a very good game to develop with a large team if you ever decide to work on it again. Your inspiration from other games helped get the overall vibe of your game across better in my opinion!