Hi, it's me again. I am writing this under the assumption that you already saw the post I made to the bug report thread. If not, i'd read that first as it gives a bit of context and insight into where my thoughts with this game lie.  Brace yourself, because I have frankly way too much to say! And, I will say this up front, my experience with your game is largely positive! You are doing very well, keep it up! I think it has some good ideas and I would love to see it improve and evolve over time. Plus, I have never gotten in on a project in an early state such as this,  so i'm curious what you have to say about the crazy directions my mind can go. No ill will is intended with this, I genuinely want to see this improve is all. But first, before I get into the big ticket suggestions, I'd thought that I would start with some more small and isolated ideas.

• I think the ascii works well for the game's current state, and while I think you should keep the @ symbol for the player, I think it would be neat if the color value of the player would be able to gradually shift to the color of the enemy they are turning into.
• For what it currently has to offer, the hub is needlessly big. in particular, the long vertical hallways in the zoo are completely unnecessary, and I think should be done away with. 
• more shop options and purchasable things. Things like, extra carrying capacity, maybe the ability to start a run with one of a few pieces of equipment, tips and advice, in-game clarification on how some of the game's mechanics work, things of that nature. Perhaps some of the other suggestions that I have can also be sold in the shop as an upgrade?
• I think the shop should also allow you to toggle purchased upgrades on and off, so you can challenge yourself while showing your current game completion. "Now that I have used the upgrades I have purchased to get better at the game and get to higher floors, I want to see how good I am without them. I don't want to reset my zoo, achievements, and other collectables to do this!"
• Also tied to either the shop or the zoo: Being able to take an animal type you have gotten an ending for, and starting a run with that animal as your BASE FORM I think would be really cool! (Though of course, that would likely mean that the story for each transformation might need to be rewritten for every animal type, and might also require a rework to the level system to balance out all the animal types.) 
• Maybe, depending on the relative strength of each animal type you can start a run as, the extent they get transformed for any reason also changes? Like, a run where you start as a Wolf or Bat for example means that you are TF'd a lot on death, whereas weaker ones are more resistant to change? Maybe, select animals like Mice and Snakes possess higher innate Mana regen? food for thought.
• I think the cats need to be toned down somewhat. They are far too common on the first floor for how much damage they deal per hit, and it feels like I'm always dyeing to them, and not the bunnies and mice of the lower floors, the enemies that stop appearing very quickly.  At the same time, its weird how the kobolds are relatively rare on the first two floors, but are much easier to deal with than the cats. That feels... wrong. 
• I suggest that cats should have their attack dropped, only like one or two points really, and either will try to attack mice and bunnies in addition to the player, or should be less common on the first two floors with the other enemies' odds increased to compensate. (I'm always loosing because one or two cats spot me from a mile away and wont ever leave me alone, when really, on floor two, i'd think it funny for the player to get trampled by a pile of mice and bunnies instead. Leave the cats's true power for floor three and up. Plus, their TF priority seems a bit high as well...
• as for Kobolds, I think they should be able to open chests, pick up items, spawn with and use equipment they possess or find, and can sometimes drop equipment and items when defeated. (Items and equipment that are dropped by Kobolds have a slightly higher chance of being cursed!)
• I think the "examine self" spell should be more useful, as the information it gives, for being something you want players to not over rely on, (an opinion I agree with), kind of doesn't say much. Sure, it does say a bunch of body parts and says either, "Looks Human", or "Definitely transformed into a [BLANK]", but frustratingly, that's all it says. The reason this is annoying is that it does not make it clear if a body part can be partially transformed, or if it a simple yes or no system (I am pretty sure the latter is not the case) and altogether it makes it really hard to see to what extent "reduce curse" has on you. So far as I can tell, it does not revert any body part's changes period until you have been totally "cured", which I say then makes it a bad system for seeing how transformed you actually are.
• my suggestion for that is, for the status of each individual body part, you could give ballpark descriptions for each of them. For example: at TF %'s of 0-10%, "Looks human".  For 11%-30%, "Seems normal, but it feels strange...?" For 31%-60% or if two or more transformations are fighting over the body part, "It's actively transforming!" For 61%-90%, "It's mostly transformed into a [Blank]'s [Part of the new species body]". and for 91%-100%, "It's completely transformed into a {blank]'s [part of body]!" On one hand, I think this can better show how much you are transformed, how fast you are transforming, show how effective "reduce curse" is being, and show how close you are to a game over.
• Also, consider maybe adding an extra one or two body part slots that are active only while you are transforming into a creature that would have them. You know, things like tails, and wings extending from the back, for example. Having that stuff be pegged to the torso while having the other limbs be in two parts seems odd to me.
• in addition, while it is nice that this menu does show what you have equipped to each body part, I think you could do more with it. For example, if your transformation is currently rendering a piece of your equipment unusable, it should say so. Like, Right hand: Armor: Gauntlets (Disabled by Wolf's paw), Weapon: Wooden Spear (Disabled by Wolf's paw, superseded by Wolf's claws).
• Also for the examine self spell, as a bit of a future-proofing thing: beside the read out on the body parts, I think you could have a second set of read-outs containing, for example, current hunger level,  including if the protagonist thinks their diet has shifted, any known status conditions including cursed equipment that has 'gone off', the overall amount that you have been transformed on a more objective capacity, and how quickly you are transforming. (that last one I will get back to later). All of these I think should be given in broad terms, as if they are being said by the protagonist, and not just be some number value. (Weirdly enough, the one that I think I most want added to the 'examine self' spell is the hunger information...)
• You have stated repeatedly that you don't want new players paranoidly using inspect self and reduce curse over and over again, and ultimately not knowing how the mechanics actually work. I agree! But, quite often, when I go up a level I find myself instantly useing most of my gained Mana on reduce curse anyway, sometimes five or six times until I am actually cured. So, I think I know exactly how to fix both these issues, and make TF management a whole heck of a lot more interesting: 
• Give reduce curse a cool down, and make it's effects work over time like the regular transformations do! Don't want players spamming reduce curse over and over again? Well, the simple solution to not let them! Force them to have to wait 100-300 steps or something like that before they can use it again! Plus, make it weirder and more robust.
• For example, consider splitting the spell into two different options that share the same cooldown. One option, "reduce curse", will only instantaneously drop your net transformation by a small amount, (say, 5%), and primarily will slow the rate that you are transforming, or make it possible to naturally transform back, slowly, depending on other factors. The other option, "Remove curse" would be more expensive, but would cure you immediately by about 35%, but would do very little to slow down the rate at which your transformations are progressing. this more expensive option can also be found as a random item!
• I purpose that we radically rework the way transformations are handled so that the mechanics are more clear to understand by the player, but also more difficult for the player to manage in a way that hopefully feels rewarding. firstly, while I think the very slight transformation effect from taking damage is fine, I have decided that I kinda don't like how much dyeing can immediately add to how transformed you are, and so I believe that it would be better if most of the effect was handled over a period of time after you respawn, by greatly increasing the speed by which you transform for a time.
•  For the rate at which your transformation progresses, this should be a very complicated but robust system. lets suppose the speed at which your transformation is progressing is largely independent of the animal you are transforming into. imagine a scale from zero to twelve, with any possible number in-between, including non-integers, is the final value of your transform speed. Before explaining how this number is gained, lets talk how it is interpreted and used first, as, this is not a value to be taken as is. Rather, it is to be then used to determine the player's actual TF conditions.
• Now, take that scale, and divide it into five unequally sized groups. for example: Group A is 0-2. B is 2-3.5. C is 3.5-7.5. D is 7.5-10. and E is 10-12. So, now we have five different "Transformation speeds" based on the result of the previous number. What do they do? Well, E is where you are transforming into another creature very fast. Usually, you will only get here if you just died more than once in a quick succession, or are being subjected to the peak of a cursed item's effects, or are suffering from several factors at once. If you end up in here somehow without actually having an active transformation, feel free to then GIVE the player an active transformation! D is for the transformation progressing at a decent pace. This is where you would get one of the notifications for the transformation's 'story' about once a minute. For C, the transformation is progressing VERY slowly. Akin to watching grass grow, paint dry, and water boil, its very gradual but always progressing further, creeping ever further into your body. You can be at a transformation speed of D and C and not have an active transformation, but I think these levels will raise the odds that a transformation will start because you took damage. B, the transformation actually is paused and won't progress. The default value of the TF speed is at 3.1, and this is the value the run starts at as well as what the tf speed value tries to settle at most of the time. and in A, the transformation will actually recede back in the direction of your base form at a rate somewhere between C and D. 
• I think these TF speed groups can also be put under the examine self spell, with the protagonist having different comments for that menu depending on the level the TF value is currently in. For example: A can say, "I think I am returning to normal!" B can say, "I feel fine." or "My body feels stable." C can say, "I feel a little off" or "Something is not quite right with me." D can say things like, "My skin is so itchy!", "I keep having these tingly feelings!" and "I am definitely transforming!" and E can say things like, "These changes... I can't... stop them!" and "The transformation is so intense!"  I also think that there can be more of them that can be displayed then these, and perhaps you can have some unique ones for specific animals.
• Does any of this make any sense at all as a mechanic? I hope so. I just want to talk about it so I can get it off my chest, really.  Anyway, i'm about to get pretty dam mathematical, so please keep in mind that I have not actually run any numbers and just trying to give you a good idea of what sorts of numbers we could be dealing with. obviously, if you actually try to build and test this system, the actual results would likely need a lot of fine tuning, and could look very different from what i'm suggesting here..
• Anyway, As for how we get our TF value in the first place, it would be a bit convoluted, but I want it to be something that is always slowly drifting back towards its default value of 3.1, but does so a bit erratically. It shouldn't make big jumps, (Unless cursed items or player death is involved, of course), but will stubbornly insist on hanging around the C area a lot of the time. I think it's current value could be  based at least partially, if not mostly, on the standard deviation of the last ten or so values it recorded, how it compares to its regular value, and I think have some slight RNG involved to change the result up or down slightly. That number can then be adjusted by other, additional factors that are accumulated as multipliers, such as biome impact of the animal you are currently transforming into, like what you already have; but I think other factors that could reflect your body's ability to fight the transformation with things like how hungry you are, i.e. being well fed multiplies the result by 0.9 and as you get more hungry, the multiplier increases to 1.3 at almost starveling; (The idea being that your body is using the fuel to keep itself the same, and/or being very hungry increases one's desire to 'give in'.) current HP and MP levels could have similar, if more mild impacts, and having been recently introduced to transformation stimuli like the chance to TF from taking damage, can also add a small multiplier, unless it was a recent player death where it would be a much bigger multiplier.
• Also, if you had any plans to introduce difficulty options to the game, one effect from difficulty could be a permanent multiplier of 0.9 and 1.2 to your TF speed value for a hypothetical 'easy' and 'hard' modes respectively. (I can't believe difficulty options was one of the things that I didn't consider this whole time, now that I am writing this.)
• After all those factors are compiled, I think that is the value the game should record for it's standard deviation calculations, and for what the game displays for the inspect self spell.
• However, even after that, there's still more we can impact the value with before we USE it. Namely, the factors that don't effect what is saved to the Standard Deviation or the inspect self spell are the dampening provided by "reduce curse", which I think can add an extra 0.4 multiplier and a flat -1 for it's duration,  recently dyeing can add a flat +5 to the value, and cursed objects... before they activate they do nothing, about 100 steps before they activate they add +1 to the TF speed value and transform the body part they are equipped to by 1%, when they activate, they add 50% progress to the body part they are equipped to and 20% to two adjacent and relevant body parts, become permanently equipped, and add another +7 to your TF speed! Once their activation period is over, they stop trying to get you to transform into their preferred animal outside of their equipped body part, but remain permanently equipped and still provide a constant 1.05 multiplier and add a +0.5 to your TF speed until you find a way to remove them.
• I do have a lot more to say about cursed items in particular, but as they are the only subject I still want to talk about and since this one post is getting way too long anyway, I think I will cut this post off here and give the CURSED ITEM EMPORIUM its own thread.