Love the art!

Interesting concept, I think a tutorial at the start showing how the interactions work would be super! The graphics were really nice and the sound effects were decent.

Interesting game! nice art, it looked really good!

Game was pretty confusing wasn't really sure what to do. seems like it could be really cool though if there was a tutorial at how to play

Cute art

Really fun and innovative. The sound was great but some calm music could have gone a long way. Reminds me a lot of the cell stage of Spore. I did find the swatter/light not nearly as useful as the tweezers, I managed to solve most of my problems by putting the right things in the right places.

Well done art, I agree with above about having some kind of tutorial to show the mechanics.

WHAT A CUTE GAME!!!
But I think it will be better if there is a tutorial guide.

Like others said, art was great. Sound made a really chill atmosphere as well, being mostly whispers and bubbles with a soft growl here and there. A panel explaining the relationships between all the bugs would be helpful, since it took me a while to figure out that the spiders eat the beetles, and I still don't know what the fish did. I can see that the flashlight makes the bugs run faster, but otherwise don't know what the point of it us -- you can just pick the bug up and put it near the spider.
Also, the game is very long, especially when someone is just learning it. I think I spent about ten minutes in one round and then ended up with no beetles to feed the spiders and had to lost.
Well done! It's a gorgeous and pleasant submission, and I'm happy I played it.

This is so fun and chill. The art is great and the sounds are so relaxing. I especially liked the feeling of growing the plants with the flashlight. In a future version it might be nice to have a little more positive feedback for the player, like growing sounds while the plants sprout, having the creatures react when they get fed, or pause for a second then visibly scuttle over and start an eating animation, something like that. For LD though this is perfect! Nice work.

I like the idea of creating an environmentally unstable game. It would be great to get a tutorial and such obviously, but we only have so much time in a jam and you guys did a lot with it! The sound design and animations were really nice. I think seeing some metrics might be cool for this type of game, great work!

A beautiful and creative game, good work! I loved the art style and the creature's design (thanks for letting me name it!).

A simple tip for next games: always make sure the player can exit the game without pressing ALT+F4. How will your moms stop playing the game otherwise? They will be stuck in an endless game without knowing how to quit!

Just joking, good job :wink:

Your illustrations are beautiful!!! Good idea to name the critter, it helps to empathize with the character.
You could improve the user interface a bit by adding a menu and including a tutorial so you can understand how to play. Likewise, adding a bit of music to the game would help to increase the immersion.

Great entry: coherent art, non-intrusive sounds, solid system and great answer to the theme. Love how you managed to create the system and leave "balancing" to the players :wink:

While I like the on-screen scenery, on the other hands it's sad to see you species last example go to the corner, and never come out.

Also would be nice, to have some near-death indicator for each bug, or at least spiders. Wasted few opportunities to feed spiders to Merlion while waiting for them to get bigger :disappointed:

that was pretty neat! I was also thinking of doing something about ecosystem balance for this theme! I also liked all the little interactions from clicking the little reeds. By the time i figured out how the ecosystem worked it was kind of too late, but i had fun figuring out who eats what. Not sure what the flashlight tool is for?

Great looking game, and nice job hiding the upper right UI if the cursor is too close. Seemed like the bugs wanted to wander too close to the edge of the screen (or possibly off it, not sure) which made keeping track of those ones a bit problematic, maybe reducing the total screen space they can wander would be an improvement. Would be nice to see a species count, as well as maybe changing icons or colors to indicate if they're under or over-populated. Also seems like the plants grow in areas that aren't affected by the slug goo, which makes the slugs feel less useful. The main other thing given more time would just to be moving the instructions in game somehow, whether that be a comprehensive tutorial or just a goal with some tooltips over the tools and the species.

Love the concept and the art was lovely, but I would have appreciated more guidance with regard to how to balance the ecosystem, I didn't find it super intuitive. But once I did figure it out, I had a lovely time!