Thank you for playing, and thank you for such a lovely comment.
It is quite possibly all style and no substance, but I'm glad it is appreciated. I wasn't sure what to do coming in, so I simply decided to try and start and finish in a visually nice way and then figure out how to fill the middle in!
It seems that jams are a museum of tradeoffs and you've hit the nail on those, I certainly intend to address many of those elements in the future. I've been working my way through all of the textures and recreating them in 3d this weekend for a nice boost.
Thank you again for your thoughtful words and helpful pointers for me to take this further.