Thanks for these suggestions! They're really great. And sorry for the delayed response.
I know what you mean about the dash. I'm also thinking about making the dash multidirectional, including the dash waves. That should make hitting bad apples easier.
Yeah, not having the turrets destroy bad apples would be good. That should be easy enough. I might also try to find a way to stagger the turret shots so that they don't all shoot at once when a slime appears -- most shots get wasted that way.
I agree about the boss rewards. Maybe defeating them can multiply current apples by a certain amount. First boss is 1.25x, second boss 1.5x, etc. Then those rewards would still scale with current apple frequency upgrades.
I had come to a similar realization with the SSP in the digging game, so I feel like I was trying to avoid them late game because they'd make me drop down. Maybe I'll change them so they never destroy any dirt below you, and maybe I can make the upgrades cheaper to compensate for that change.
And that's interesting about the red fish! I hadn't thought about resetting that upgrade. I've been considering changing the whole red to gold upgrades, just because of how crazy it becomes. It's essentially the only way to get a really high score, so I might play around with some more powerups, or potentially making the game go EVEN DEEPER. If I do go deeper, I think I'll add upgrades that will act as checkpoints, so the hook can start at certain depths.
Thanks again for the feedback! It's definitely really helpful!