Hey, I'm glad you enjoyed it! I've got a bunch of improvements planned for the Steam release. I'll be consulting with a UI artist to improve the basic theme already present and to make the effects of buildings more legible. (I've been playing a ton of Cobalt Core lately, and I think I can take some lessons from their icon language on the cards. Also, go play Cobalt Core.)
I do want to show some indication of affected buildings when you place a new building. I have code in place to do this, but I couldn't figure out a way to make it look good (with the art style's lighting). That's another place where I plan to hire someone for guidance.
As for "adjacent" vs "neighboring", they are the same thing. I thought that the most recent update changed all the "adjacent" text to "neighboring", but I very well could have missed some. The one-screen tutorial page on the title page has a pictorial representation of the different effect patterns, but it's not necessarily an obvious thing to look at.