Hey, that's quite a long list of things you were able to come up with while watching the video. I am happy my feedback was so useful to you.
- All buffing zooids are pointless because of the upgrades, yes.
- I think limiting the number of zooids of the same type you have and collecting them instead is a great idea. I think you could go even more extreme with the idea and have them be permanently eaten.
- It really was not clear if the buffs were effecting only the zooids you already had on your creature, or if they would apply their buffs on future grown parts.
- The ability to change between different build presets is something I asked for in the past. Think of it as something like swapping between different armour sets in other games. I could have a reset for movement, another for all frontal attacking and so on. You might think it would be too powerful, but the option to edit your creature on the fly is already there. That would just make it quicker for players, and would not break the flow of the game. If you still think it would be unbalanced, then I guess swapping out parts like that could cost energy.
- You mentioned showing the eaten zooids as "ghosts". I would need to see it in action. The idea is not bad, but you gotta maintain the visual clarity.
- maybe the number of parts you can have on you could also be an upgrade.
- I think the level ups should definitely be on some pause screen and not in the middle. If you still want the players to be in the middle, then make it so the middle area acts as one of your vortexes from the other mode. You level up, go to middle, hold space, all action pauses, select upgrade from a window, unpause ad back to action.
- Alternatively the whole area could be made into some looping path where the player must survive while getting rid of closing zones.
- if you watched my bonus videos, then you can really see how badly so much poison effects the performance on its own.
- It could be that I was just far too strong, but the strain strat became not a problem at all.
- one of your balance ideas is to make poison boost melee? I don't think you need to be buffing poison at all.
- I don't think "Picking up already owned zooid pickups could give a random Mutation for the zooid" is a good idea, because I think the big fun of this mode is strategizing what upgrades you get out of a random pool. Getting something random entirely would be very different, but I understand some players might be into that.