Thank you so much for your (really helpful and insightful) reply!
Your feedback really is a good reminder that things that you design might be perceived differently by your players!
You can for example eat each of the enemies, but only after you defeated them. The snakes herein are sort of an exception as they die on contact without hurting you.
Tutorials and juice (and some sort of boss battle) were in the 'outside of my league - for now' part of this jam, but I'll definitely look into those in upcoming jams. Also I do know that balancing is still pretty off in this game.
Thank you so much for playing and commenting!