Wow, thank you so much for taking the time to write all of that. I basically agree with everything that you said. My biggest struggle in this project was edging that balance between being a game and being "things happening on a screen".
I am pumped to hear you liked the music, and specifically the mention that it didnt get boring during a long session is awesome. I was listening to a lot of afrobeat for my inspiration for that - driving hypnotic rhythms with short sections of melodies and stuff like that, I think leaning into the forms of that genre really helped me because those old Fela Kuti tracks are always like 20 mins.
I am beyond excited that you pointed out some of the flaws in my technical process with the visual art, its definitely given me a good perspective on things I could have done better that really wouldnt have taken any more effort, just a little more experience/information. Also, I will tell you a secret - there is actually no y-axis scaling or anything like that in the game. Idle Idol Isle is actually 3d and the depth is real so the perspective is just things getting farther away from the camera.
I am sorry you experienced that feeling of "what to do next?" at points. There are some of those newer games like 'Tiny Glade' or some other cozy games where you just build a room and there's no goals or points or anything and I was trying to bring in some of that "just hang out in this cool place and do whatever" vibe.
Again, I am really really thankful that you were willing to write all of that (especially constructive criticism) as I am seriously thinking that after this game jam I am going to start a project based on what ive learned here and try and do an actual release. I'm also probably going to send you a picture of scene view of my game (on discord) so you can see how I built it in 3d just because I think it's neat.
happy game development!