This is a very well thought out and detailed response that I was not prepared for. I don't have time to respond to every aspect of it, but I'll try to boil down my main thought about it as best I can. First of all, it clearly didn't hurt your rankings since your game did very well it looks. A sincere congratulations.
I think my main sadness in all this is primarily the fact that it just goes against imo the spirit of the entire idea of a "GameJam" in this day and age. Why are we doing this? Why are any of us doing any of this? In 5 years (give or take) what will GameDev even be? Will there be any point? Will it just be a big button you press once and the computer will generate the whole darn thing? Yeah, probably honestly at this rate.
Ultimately, no I don't judge you, and I'm happy you made a fun game. But one of my favorite games I played in this jam was one where some dude's main music track was a recording of him doodling on his guitar and whistling lol. It was charming, it was silly, it was human.
I always wanted to make games growing up, I almost chose the field for real, but life had other plans and I'm glad it did. I've accepted that this is a hobby for me, but I worry how much longer there will be a point in even that.
I know I sound like a grumpy old man shaking his fist at the clouds, but our time to make our silly little human games might realistically be limited here.