Thank you so much for trying out the game and for your feedback! It is really helpful!
And yes, there were a couple ideas we had for the game that we ran out of time to implement. Originally, parts of the map would be locked, and would only be unlocked after interacting with the manta. And with the pond, I was running into issues creating a persistent inventory, which is what I think was causing the troubles.
I am going to keep working on the game after the jam to finish implementing our ideas, so thanks again for the feedback!! Hope you check out the game again when it's updated!