This is the first game that I am play-testing for this jam and you've set the bar quite high! First I have to give praise to the music which was really outstanding, it fit the mood perfectly and was a pleasure to have on loop. The only caveat here is that I had to lower it to hear the computer voice upon landing as it was hard to hear what the computer was saying.
Next up comes the gameplay. I found it very intuitive and loved discovering new parts of the world and new resources. The objectives were really clear, and it was fun trying to trade off where to invest my prisoners to gather resources: go for more energy production? go for food to get more prisoners / level up? go for resources to leave the planet? I did find the game a bit grindy towards the end. I had every prisoner lvled up to lvl 12 and only mining a single resource to get to the 8k/4k/2k requirements, finding myself leave the game for a bit as it was a bit slow to get all of that completed. The intro was really well done, the ending was fine as well, although it seemed that I finished in a cell for some reason, I was a bit confused by that. I did find a few bugs left and right (sometimes getting teleported back to the ship, ability to finish the game without the requirements, a few typos, the intro looping after a second playthrough, the game doesn't adapt well to widescreen resolutions -- I had to bump it down on my end...) but overall all those bugs were minor and I was able to go through the game with no problem.
Graphics wise, this was a very solid entry. I loved the art work, the colors that gave different moods depending on which parts of the world you were exploring. The animations were really cute, and everything was visually extremely clear (picking up resources, mining actions, etc). Great work on the shadows as well.
Theme wise, I can see where the rebirth is coming from, but it wasn't a huge part of the gameplay experience. That's totally fine by the way :)
Overall this was a really fun little game. Awesome job to all of you for pulling this together. Really strong entry! Cheers