Hey there, here are my random thoughts about the game.
TLDR: Nice game
Long Version:
No tutorial. Nonetheless I didnt feel lost. It was easy to find out what I can do. I hate tutorials that tell me what to do, exploring on my own speed is a lot more enjoyable. It would be nice if the "first enemy after 20s" timer, would start once I build the first room. That way I can just explore for a while. Especially since the game loads for a while for me, I might load it in the BG and tab back into it to find my dead crew screaming for help or something like that.
I didnt realize that there is a UI in the bottom right giving me info about the rooms until I played the game a 4th time. (I failed often and miserably)
The story with the whale polluting the world and the jellyfishes fighting it was really cool. I like the artificial whale vs natural jellyfish. Thats some good contrast. And when I played it, I did understand some of this. The pollution becoming more the more you upgrade is a really good tool for the pacing of the game! I think it could be shown with some particle up the whales ... behind. It could reflect how much the whale pollutes and why there are more enemies coming and creates more contrast between the bright world and the whales darkness. Or is it all accumulating until the whale finally has a toilet?
The camera was my worst enemy. Zooming into something to upgrade was hard. Enemies would often come so zooming into a room will make me unable to shoot them. I feel like the camera movement itself wasnt bad but slow.
Allowing me to fastly see where I want to be would be nice. I personally just use cinemachine. I let it follow an object. The Object goes somewhere between the mouse and the center of the action (the whales center). Meaning I can fastly look anywhere with the mousemovement. Right clicking and zooming would be hard though. I guess you would have to repick the center as the room you clicked on. Even though I would prefer not being completly zoomed into one room. That way I can upgrade and shoot at the same time.
The camera gave me flashbacks to super mario 64. As in the game is really good. Getting the camera to show what I want feels bad. Still I want to play the game for the game made me engaged from the start and kept me planning, executing and strategizing with it's fast pace until I died. There are many things to do and they work well. The points I have to spend on upgrades or rooms all make sense. Never did I feel "why is this so cheap" or "why is this so expensive". It actually inspired me a lot to overwork the ressources in the game Im working on right now. Really amazing job on that! It made me come back to beat the game several times as a gamer. And as a Game Designer it gave me some food for my brain, it made me curious, interested and even more important inspired!