This is insanely well developed and polished. As others stated, the game really needed a more complete tutorial / manual. I believe it's possible that the majority of people who played Tiny Shapes decided not to rate it because they did not understand the gameplay or gave up and moved on to something else after spending time figuring things out it and just didn't bother to play enough to form an opinion. The gameplay might be intuitive for players familiar to the genre, but it was not my case. It took about 30 minutes for me to understand the basics and, even after I got the hang of it, I wasn't able to evaluate the design aspect of the game without playing a bunch more. This is a shame, because I believe Tiny Shapes is a gem and otherwise would be a strong contender to be ranked at the top. The pixel art, music, sound effects and interface are flawless, and the gameplay seemed very smooth, even though I'd like more time with the game to be sure. I hope you keep working on the game post-jam or release it more widely somehow, because only 8 ratings (at the time of this review) is not nearly close to the attention it deserves.
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Wow. Thank you so much!
I think you're spot on, looking at the game's views/plays/ratings. It really goes to show how important accessibility is in game design. If it feels like a brick wall upon entry, most people will just bail. Especially in a game jam setting where it's not that uncommon for unfinished/broken games to be released.
The project might continue. I have a few things I'd like to finish for the project to feel complete. Will probably take a while to be implemented as I'm starting another project that will take up a lot of my time.