Yes! you're not alone on this! One idea we thought to fix this problem was to but a semi-circle around de sprout indicating the direction of the (closest) powerups, but didn't have time to implement. I think if we continue the game I'd like to place hints in the world instead, or use music like in the outer wilds (!)... but it's definitelly something we'll have to fix because at least three people struggled looking at the distance meter and taking care of the sprout.
In my mind I thought people would be ok on focusing on finding the powerups and once the first path is set, focus on the sprout, but dying is unpleasant. Althought we wanted people to die so you build a beautiful plant from what are supposed to be failures -- just like plants do :)
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Sounds like some great ideas. Will follow your progress. I once also experimented with a plant generator. Crazy L-System math, but was interesting to learn how this works :-D If you want to have a look at the result: http://humane-tiger.com/plant-generator/