These screenshots look amazing! It’s really neat to see a GameBoy game for this. The first thing to mention would be that I wouldn’t disqualify your game based on what you describe. The boat/face/etc. might prompt judges to give a lower score in the “Use of Crayon and Kazoo assets” category, but I’m not kicking submissions out unless they obviously aren’t using the assets at all. I’ve so far only booted one and it was AI garbage that had obviously been spammed into every jam going.
When it comes to the QR codes and UI stuff I wouldn’t hold that against it. Strictly speaking you probably could cobble together arrows etc. using the crayon assets and that would be more in keeping with the rules, but if they’re unobtrusive enough to look like something that a game engine would have built in then they’re unlikely to affect your score on that front. A QR code in particular I wouldn’t even consider an asset: it’s not in there as eye candy, just a way of encoding information so it can be scanned.
In case it helps, I spotted the issue with the font in other people’s projects: there’s now a fixed version. (I could actually do with touching up the “l” as well but it doesn’t affect the spacing.)
Also, if you’ve modified any of the assets in a way that others may find useful, this thread has prompted me to begin inviting submissions for a community expansion.