Neat! Pretty cool take on tower defense, a genre I don't really like that much.
Cool art style and nice animations! Though the style was a bit inconsistent. The pixel size was all over the place which made it seem a bit sloppy and not that cohesive. For pixel art style, you should always draw everything on the same pixel scale and avoid doing any scaling or rotating in the engine itself for a overall nice crisp look. Stuff like the mouth already had various pixel sizes in the sprite itself I think.
There were some serious z-fighting (ie. sprite draw order) issues going on with different entities. This is most easily fixed in a game like this in Unity (which you seemed to be using) by assigning SpriteRenderer SortOrder property (or add SortingGroup component if you want deeper control) based on the y-axis. That way what ever is lower on the screen appears to be "in front". This depth issue was also giving me grief when trying to grab dudes off the tentacles and eventually made me lose because I couldn't grab the guys that were beneath the tentacles. I'd go as far as completely lock the tentacle movement during the play and not be so strict when clicking on dudes to grab them.
The leveling up got a bit boring after few rounds in as there were only two options. The crossbow didn't fire a single shot for me (and yes, I had it equipped with a bolt) so I focused pretty much only on tentacles. But they too have diminishing returns and eventually give you more harm than benefit. They basically remove a huge portion of the map from all interactions.
While dragging the dudes to the mouth, it felt a bit awkward to wait for it to completely open before letting go. So many times I let go too early (as it lacks any proper feedback of when it's ready) only to have the dude then escape to behind the tentacles from there. Same thing kinda goes for the final feeding that you have to wait for the animation to end before you can level up. A minor thing but annoying anyway.
There is also a glitch where the mouth sometimes just doesn't accept the offering and refuses to open up until you get off it and try again...
Hmm, looks like animated gifs don't play on itch anymore... that's a bummer! 😱
Audio was cool too but got very repetitive. A few variations for the screams and eating sounds which were happening constantly would really be welcome. Music helped a bit but it was also a tad repetitive and had a bit of a looping gap issue. Also looks like you added the sounds after the submission deadline which though not strictly forbidden, isn't really in the spirit of the jam.
Q: Can I edit my game after submission?
A: You can fix critical bugs, but leave a note explaining the changes. Avoid altering the game during the voting period.
Anyways, good job! 👍