Thanks for playing. Yea we wanted to introduce some textures for the terrain but decided to first really focus on the gameplay to get something going that atleast feels good to play. When we finally finished the mechanics we had about a day left to actually play test and once we did we decided that adding some kind of upgrade/shop had the most impact on the gameplay. Even with the downscoping we ended up having a bit too little time to add.
The over rendered visuals was definitely a stylistic choice. It was a bit inspired by Nubby's Number Factory but it's definitely a love it or hate it kinda thing. Ultimately I wanted to try making the models in blender and exporting them to see how that works (for easy iteration and normal map) and the result does kinda work.
And also like you mentioned, yea it's quite a literal interpretation of the theme. For the next jam I'd definitely try and spend a bit more time interpreting it.
All in all, thanks for the feedback :)