it's good to hear that y'all have done so many jams and also have struggled with over scoping. this is personally my first jam and as a solo developer i actually also struggled with overscoping a bit and having to scale down. at first my game idea was about just a bird collecting from a spinning bird feeder but i couldn't really figure out how to make the seeds fling out from the bird feeder so i ditched that and made it "survive the seeds falling on you". i think it's natural for every developer to overscope some, especially in a game jam. game development is an art, in art you have to refine your piece a lot. there's touches you add and others you have to remove, the vision always comes together in one way or another though.
it's nice to hear the evolution of your game! a tiered approach def makes sense, especially with more people. even if it was an ambitious goal i think that y'all did a really good job in the end with scope.
i think if y'all did want to y'all could really make this project shine if you wanted to! maybe you could add a skill tree or something, that would be cool if you continued this project.