Thanks for the praise! I agree with the scaling theme - we actually found it quite difficult to include it more in the game while not having it feel being 'dragged by the ears'. We choose to focus on a full game-loop instead. Glad you enjoyed it!
Regard the pixel art - sadly we cannot take credit for most of it. Our team exists of only 2 developers that have still yet to become professional pixel artist ;) The combat pixel assets are mostly from RafaelMatos - a really good pixel artist (and cool guy) with great art. His assets have been used in quite a few steam games, and I was glad I was able to use some of his art to make ours as nice looking as we could in the month. ;)