There's a real wholesome warmth to this game; somewhere between the cute bouncy animations to the lighthearted faces and the thick character outlines there's just something calm and sweet.
However, I found the first few moments of the game quite overwhelming, and quite far from that aesthetic which made lowering myself into it a bit more complex. The strangely laid out menu and the big ol' wall-o-text controlsl were too much for my brain to handle on entering. I think it was made a bit more complex by me not knowing what the "merge" and "drop/split" were going mean in the game, so I immediately forgot the controls and had to go back to the menu... haha. Finding some way to introduce the mechanics organically coul be nice. Not necessarily a tutorial but just some more obligatory progression.
I also appreciated you giving the player agency to choose the music, but kind of felt that by choosing it yourself you could have had a much tighter hold over the audio atmosphere you were building with the game, which in turn would have had a big impact on the gameplay. I think it's also worth noting that the music starting as "off" is a little wierd as that first moment really sells the identity of the game, so the sound should/could be a big part of that :)
Overall a cute style and niice to see how many different systems you put in the game, but really nailing that mood early on and adding a clearer progression would have done a lot for me. :)