I think the big thing would be to increase clarity. For example a label at the top of each menu so you know which menu is open (like “choose a production” or “choose a building” or something). Similarly the “tile selection” button doesn’t really look like a clickable button when compared to the “create cell” button. And when opening a building’s menu, having it’s current production already highlighted would be nice, because its hard to tell what a building is producing if you forget. A farm that does not have a production chosen yet also animates the same as if it was producing.
The other big thing I found is that it takes a lot of clicks to do something. For example, 1 click to highlight a building -> another click to open it’s menu. Since there currently doesn’t seem to be a reason to highlight a building other than to open it’s menu, it might as well be one click opens the menu (Also if I open a farm menu, but then click an envelope tile once, it looks like I have the envelope selected but the menu that is open is showing the farm). Similarly, say, to buy a new apple farm on an empty square then close the menu its 7 clicks (select tile -> click tile selection button -> farm -> click farm tile to open it’s menu -> click apple -> click tile selection button twice to close menu). Since the only reason so far to left click an empty tile is to put something there, and once you buy a (T1) tile you probably want to assign it a production, this could be 3-4 clicks (click empty tile opens buy menu -> click farm to buy it -> click or maybe auto open farm menu -> select apple, which could auto close the menu once selected). Auto closing the menu once selected would also stop problems like being able to click to buy a farm multiple times in a row and losing money, even though you’re only building a single farm.
I also couldn’t place any T2 stuff, or delete them if I accidentally clicked the create cell button.
I think the core idea is really interesting and the art looks good, I think if you felt like fixing those after the jam it could be a fun game, and if not, then I look forward to playing your next game :)