Thank you for such a detailed comment! Really appreciate you leaving this here, but also all around other devs work, it really allows me and i am sure other devs the opportunity to understand in depth your experience with the jam games.
Glad the lava worked as intended hehe and also the buttons with the keys written on them (good catch)
Thank you also for noticing and commenting about the shapes in the main menu! Square represents solid cat, triangle liquid, and circle gas cat. As the pressure increases through time, the cat changes states (and if you successfully keep its green bar above a threshold) it transforms or goes back to the sludge after reaching each pressure point. This was my sign of progression (alongside the bars ofcourse), trying to signify "how close to the end". In retrospect, I could have made it way clearer, instead of leaving at the main screen, without even an animation to draw the eye there. After reaching the gas (circle) cat once, the pressure increases again, turning the cat solid, but more defined. Then again through all the states, to more defined, reaching the end with a lvl9 fully animated gas cat.
The blue bar, I went for "weight" as the original tamagotchi i think.
regarding the fraction task:
Blue button tried to represent the "play/work" action of the original. I tried to draw on it an image of balancing scales. You are given 2 fractions, and must say if they are the same (X- green) or different (N -orange). And ofcourse i have equivalent fractions there, which i secretly classify as "the same" that's why the balancing scales.