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Forgot to respond! Thank you very much for the feedback. I just uploaded a new version that I hope addresses most of the things you mentioned. Let me know what you think. Thanks again!

Really cool idea! I'd be interested to see a fully fleshed out platformer with this game mechanic. I got really low gravity early on and was able to skip a few levels by jumping over one platform. I like the idea of each level being randomly easier or harder depending on what you get. All of the enemies despawned as soon as I started the level. (They were visible until I selected up or down) Can't remember if I got a reduce enemy health buff that might have caused that. Either way, it's cool I got things that made the game easier. I selected down every time. Nice job!

There is an evolution tree on the right side when you click on a fish. It wouldn't have shown up for you until toward the end of the Tutorial so maybe you didn't make it that far. 

I would like to make a larger version of it in its own menu and I agree it helps the player understand what they are working toward. I like your suggestions about how it could work.

Thanks for playing!

I hadn't encountered the camera getting stuck inside rocks. I'll look into it. 

The fish not evolving is likely a bug. I'm still ironing out that whole system. But yes, its supposed to build up to 100% at which it changes to a new species and reverts to 0%. So it should have evolved to the next fish at 100% but I'm guessing that number is off and it hadn't actually eaten enough food yet to evolve. 

That's a good idea! I've been looking for a smoother way to deselect those buttons, besides clicking on them again. That may just be perfect!

And the fish not eating the naturally occurring plants is something that's bugged me for a while. Haha. I would like them to eat the plants eventually, perhaps as a way of keeping them fed without the player having to constantly feed them, especially once the player moves away from the Pond. But then I'd have to remove all of the plants at the start which I worry will cause the scene to look too barren. 

But it could be a whole game mechanic, to build up the plant populations in all of the biomes along with the fish and it would automate feeding them. I would need equivalents for the carnivorous fish, maybe insects or tadpoles. 

Thanks for the feedback!

That was pretty much spot on about the Goldfish. There was a trigger for when it reached a certain size to stop growing until it gets moved to a larger area but I had used "<=" when I should have used just  "<" in the If statement so it was triggering continuously. Simple enough to fix!

Your suggestions on the audio and visual cues for things happening are helpful. I'm sure that will take some experimentation when I get to it. 

I imagine the core of the game like one of those merge games, where you merge two or three things to make one larger/better thing and repeat. So it takes 40 pieces of food to turn a Minnow into a Goldfish, Tetra, or Danio to start. To evolve them further they would need perhaps twice as much food or a smaller amount of a higher quality or larger food. (I haven't built that particular difference into the demo quite yet. All evolutions take 40 foods right now.) Once you unlock a predatory fish, you may need to feed it 40 minnows, or 40 of the larger fish to get it to the next stage. Other than feeding them more, it may simply become more complicated what you have to feed them. Maybe they need a specific combination. Maybe they need to be in a specific biome to evolve. Maybe they have to perform some other action first. 

You may need a large population of some of the lower stage fish to evolve the higher ones. This is where the ecosystem management comes in. You'll want to keep the lower populations large enough to keep the larger fish fed. The player may unlock some sort of auto-feeder as they get further, to automate the lower fish's evolution so they can focus on the higher fish. 

And that goes into the ultimate goal of the game, which is to keep evolving the fish, discover all of the species and fill all of the biomes. So my focus at the moment is making that clear at the beginning of the game (needs some work obviously) and making it engaging and rewarding early on. 

Thanks for the awesome feedback! And for taking it all in with a grain of salt. There are definitely some issues to iron out, even with this basic beginning of a game, but I'm glad you enjoyed what it is so far and can see some potential. That's good to hear at this point.

That's hilarious about the Goldfish. I've only seen it once and I have no idea what's causing it. Haha. But it does say something for the value of unexpected things happening in the game. Maybe something similar to that could be worked into the game later. 

Your other points are helpful and I'll be working on some of them very soon to make the demo run a bit smoother and actually do what it's supposed to. 

Your point about feedback is perhaps the most valuable to me at the moment. I'd like to make that core mechanic of feeding/growing/evolving the fish as engaging as possible and I can see that the fish changing slightly every once in a while isn't quite enough. I'll be adding some particle effects soon to simulate the food being eaten, as if pieces of it are falling away, and when the fish changes to make it more obvious. Sound effects, I'm sure, would help with this as well. Please let me know if you have any other thoughts in the feedback department. 

Thank you again!