Nice game, good concept, and nice visuals (even thought I cannot really tell which of the visuals you did yourself for the game from the credits, but nonetheless nice choice of sprites). Good interpretation of the theme too with your tree growing, thus in some sense expanding.
I have a couple of suggestions and problems I encountered while I played that may be helpful to you if you want to keep improving the game:
- Make instructions for how and when I can adjust branch directions clearer: it now says "You'll have limited time to determine the branch direction", but in reality, what happens is that you can adjust the branch direction only when the branch is a "dead-end", and cannot adjust it anymore when the branch has attached children branches;
- Make it clearer how much of the surface of your leaves is contributing to produce energy, as right now, I feel like sometimes my energy meter goes to 0 and I can't really find a way of making it go back up, no matter how many leaves I have, how many water I contribute to each leaf, and how covered leaves are (i feel like there may even be a sort of "bug" where your energy meters keeps decreasing more and more, but the UI does not reflect this change by letting the energy bar stay fixed on 0 for the current level you are in, so you can't really see how much energy you currently actually have or have lost).
- There is a duality of relaxing/chaotic aspects in the game's design: from the visuals, the sounds and the atmosphere, it feels like the game has a chill, relaxing vibe to it, which could make the game feel like a cozy idle game to play to take a break, but it's gameplay, on the other hand, gets very chaotic and a stress-inducing with the need to decide where to direct the water to not make your leaves die... I don't know if this is a conscious design choice, aiming for the "don't let the relaxing vibe fool you" effect, but I think sticking with one between relaxing and chaotic gameplay may be a better choice, and obviously the relaxing aspect would be a better fit given the sound, atmosphere and visuals already being implemented. A quick way of making the game feel more cozy and relaxed in its gameplay too would be to add speed controls (or slow down the game directly, but speed controls would be a better fit), so that the player has time to think and relax.
I played the game without worrying about score and just growing my tree as much as possible, but I got stuck on level 8 and then I couldn't really get past that point (I guess I was not able to come up with a better tree design or strategy), so I couldn't really enjoy seeing my tree grow further with this relaxing playstyle in mind, but nonetheless I still had fun.
Good job on the game :D