Okay, hi! My v1 is submitted! Good to have another jam under my belt!
Here's the page, if you wanna give it a shot and submit a rating: https://itch.io/jam/blackthornprod-game-jam-3/rate/898015
In the end, I stripped a few more things out while chanting "less is more" in my head.
The little thing, that I actually think improves the aesthetic as dumb as it sounds, was removing eyeballs from the duck. Making it just sort of an abstract duck shape ended up being more in sync with this pared down approach.
I removed the missions/prompts to keep things more free form, and just kept the simple score mechanic for people who are trying to explore every nook and cranny. I'd originally had it displayed as like "0 / 300" but I don't imagine people sitting and trying to find all 300 things...so instead, I expose the total count only in the setup instructions and keep the score as a subtle general tally. I didn't want people to feel like it was an impossible task with that looming "out of" number visible at all times.
I'm calling this a v1 because there are things I still want to do that I didn't quite eke out in time...a few quality of life additions to make it playable on mobile, the ability to save score for people who want to return, and the ability to share specific screengrabs on social media if you find a good one. And, of course, continuing to add more verbs...300-ish is a good start, but there's a lot of ground still to cover and I want people to be able to try and push the boundaries and stump the thing and still be rewarded. Would love to hear what common words you may have tried that didn't get a response.
Best of luck to everyone else with submissions today, can't wait to play stuff!