That's a cool game!  I really like the theme and overall aesthetic.  Nice animations.

I liked the curved (spline?) level design as a departure from traditional square tile grids.  The climbing mechanic was cool, but it did have some issues sometimes.  When I first started, I went over to the left to the cocoon, and accidentally got myself lodged in the wall.  Then I jumped up through the wall and figured I would explore, and ended up falling off the left side of the map.  So of course I had to keep going and I was able to climb up the right side of the surface and fall off the right side too, haha.

I read the comments about the apples being checkpoints, but somehow I couldn't get those to work.  Each time I died, the caterpillar would go black, but nothing else would happen, so after trying all the other controls I would just press Escape, which would make me start over at the beginning.  If I can figure out how the checkpoints work, I'll give the game another go.

I thought the melee combat against the ants was pretty clean, with the attack range and knockback being clear and well balanced.  However, if I attacked an ant that was facing away from me, it would get knocked "back," but actually that would mean towards me so I would get hit.

Cute game! I really liked the design choices, the save point being an apple was especially amusing.

Some remarks:

-The character is rather twitchy and it's sometimes troublesome to move around the environment. Sometimes when I wanted to choose a path I had to turn around in a weird way. I think being able to climb all walls would have worked better.

-The leaf requirement should be there from the beginning without needing to inspect the cocoon so that you'd even know they're the main objective.

-If you exit back to the menu to restart the game, the save point doesn't work anymore.

What a cute game! I loved the little caterpillar. The theme was unique and I really enjoyed the movement, especially hanging on walls. I do wish there was one or two more things to do. I was excited to unlock the acid attack, another ability to add to that would be nice. I thought when I got food for the cocoon I would get to fly, but it was still nice to have a win screen (unlike our game lol).

I wish there were more rewards in the sewer section, or some other reason to stay there. It was so difficult that I left and got the rest of my leaves in the ant hill.

Overall, great job! I really enjoyed it

Really lovely game! I am impressed with the simplicity and also the original idea for a Metroidvania. Congratulations!

This was really cute, I loved the caterpillar lol! The tongue attack move too, pretty funny. I think the chain burst damage was interesting, although it didn't always work out for me, one of the big boss ants kept absorbing the acid blobs before it could detonate the others.

Gravity seemed a little inconsistent at times, since sometimes I could move totally vertically but sometimes I couldn't wrap around tunnels in a way that made sense to my brain, but it didn't get in the way of anything so I'm not complaining. The lil guy also had the tendency to wig out, I think around the corner where he stops detecting slopes. It gets especially finicky to control especially at the start of the sewers. Maybe it's viable to make him always stick to walls unless you jump? I'm not sure if that would get in the way of any limitations you had designed though. Currently though you can already skip a lot of the sewer upper area by climbing up the wall.

As someone else mentioned, some speed would feel nice, although I don't think it makes sense for a caterpillar to move too fast, so maybe some kind of dash?

The music was fitting for the atmosphere I think, but I think it could have benefited from being longer and more varied since it seemed like a pretty short loop. At least in the anthill, since that has drums and isn't pure ambience it's a lot more noticeable.

The environment also was difficult to remember, since everything in the anthill area uses the same brown tileset. I don't know the best way to mitigate this, since an underground ant colony probably DOES look all the same, but maybe some objects buried in the ground or a variety in the color of the soil could make places feel a bit more memorable. It's a long way to warp to save after all. Once I very sadly lost my acid attack, I had no idea how to get back to find it again. I mean, I did eventually stumble back to it, but I had to go a while again without it.

Health seemed kinda stingy. This is purely opinion, but it's very frustrating to go long stretches and then end up all the way back at the start as constantly as is, even when I'm taking chances and fighting enemies instead of avoiding them. One suggestion would be to use a more percentage based health system rather than stock, and then counting the leaves towards that percentage. Or maybe something like X amount of leaves will heal you 1 stock of health.

OKAY now that I've found the cocoon I see what leaves are for lol. Had no idea they were the objective, not sure if obfuscating that was necessary. My first instinct was to descend straight into the anthill, so I didn't see the save apple or the cocoon until pretty late. Scraping enough up in the end game is a bit tedious though... rather than exploring for powerups I'm just killing the same enemies over and over in the hopes I'll be able to scrounge up enough to finish the game. I'm also a bit disappointed that the only other powerup I found was "powerup you already have but slightly stronger" 😞

Slugs have a bit more health than I think is necessary, they're hard to hit even with the acid and tricky to avoid when they fall from the ceiling, and when you get to the sewers you're so low on health that you're especially at risk of dying easily. They also don't reward you well, only 1 leaf as opposed to some of the ants giving you 5 and feeling much easier to beat. (I'd put a save point at the start of the sewers)
I'd also maybe have made finding that first save apple at the top mandatory, or making the starting sac a save point, cos once I made it out of the first sewer I was SWEATING for health lol.

I did beat the game though, happy metamorphosis indeed!

I know this is a lot of critiques but I did enjoy it overall!!

What I liked

• I think the bug concept is really neat.
• The art is cohesive and looks cool.
• Exploding ants with acid capsules

Feedback/Suggestions

• I think the caterpillar should move slightly faster due to the map size.
• I feel like you should include some kind of warning that the little capsule things do damage when they explode. I initially thought they were food containers and died twice before I realized they were damaging. Its a cool for killing the giant ant, but it would help to know that they're dangerous before having to die a couple times.
• On the subject of dying, your game would definitely benefit from either checkpoints or you still start at the beginning, but you keep the food you've gained. I was roughly 20 food away from 200 and then died. No progress was saved and that ultimately led to me stop playing.
• Due to the environment being an ant hill with lots of twists and turns, I think youre game could really benefit from a map.

Overall, it was a cool concept and if you work on it after the jam, you could make it even cooler. Congrats!