Wow, thanks for the extremely detailed comment! I definitely agree with your criticism on the visual aspect, I actually planned to add a lot more polish (including literally everything you mentioned) in addition to a much better UI, some background elements etc. but I had some personal things come up in the last few days of the jam so I didn’t have the time. :(
I’m glad you enjoyed the game! I originally also planned to have some kind of bonus effect for merging 4 or 5 objects as well as more items that would do things like destroying enemies directly and being able to merge with any object, but they were lower on the priority list and didn’t make it in due to the time constraint.
Again, thanks for taking the time to write this! Also, I’m curious what your job is that you’re required to play merge games for work :P