A very enjoyable game, I say!
I appreciate the overall atmosphere. There were many brilliant moments, subtly humorous, mildly surprising and smart.
I like the naive graphics. Especially nice is the fact that you left "soft brush and fill" artifacts on purpose. I call it the resistance of the material and it really creates interesting effects sometimes!
Chill tempo, the absence of tension seemed irritating at first — it was a feeling that the game doesn't know what to do. Because we're used to games constantly stimulating us, pushing us forward. But after some time I started to value this calm approach. I now think it's one of the unique features of the game.
There are nice level design decisions. Like, the ladder over the big pit with spikes, covered with the chappy platform looked senseless at first. And only later on I understood why it's there.
The main gameplay feature — absorbing and expelling the children — looks underdeveloped. It's just there. If you've focused on it, it would be deeper and more meaningful. Well, probably then we wouldn't have all those tiny moments with the scientist and the turtle. Nevertheless.
Overall I think the game would benefit a lot if you would focus on only one of its aspects more. For example, make it really puzzly by taking the absorb-expell mechanic to the limit by thought out level design. Or vise versa turn it into a little smart sitcom full of dialogues and expressive characters, maybe built upon soft exploration mechanics. I clearly see that you're capable of doing any of these.
There are quite a lot of technical issues and inconsistencies. I have the list and it's long) If you're interested, feel free to reach me at https://twitter.com/bulboka