Interesting game idea and I like how you created an entire little world for the game to explore. Nice work! To improve, some visual or audio feedback on hits would be great. The sprites have been commented on already and unless it was a conscious choice of style that went right above my head: Know and play your strengths, if in doubt use one of the many great free asset packs out there.
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I think that's the problem of making games: There's always so much more to put in and never enough time ;)
And I agree with you, you're not going to learn unless you do it. For a short jam, I would say it's easier to use existing assets for the majority of what I need to be able to focus my attention on the main assets, like characters, and get those right. By the way: What helped me getting into pixel art was restricted color palettes and tiny size. It's a lot easier to produce consistent results with just 4 colors and an 8x8 image. And once I had a hang of that, I was able to scale and build on what I had learned.