Thank you so much for trying out the game.
Honestly, I agree with you about the animations. They definitely could've been skipped or made significantly shorter. I've honestly been investing a lot into tools and techniques to enhance the game feel of my games, and I think my obsession with making everything look visually beautiful might have hurt the experience a bit in this case.
As for preparing things before the jam, the answer is both yes and no.
I've been making grid-based puzzle games for a while now. This is actually my fourth one, so many of the systems, utilities, and tools used in my previous games were also used in this one, but extended and more polished. That gave me a lot of extra time to add new features and content during the jam itself.
Thank you so much for playing the game and for the feedback!