Great job on your first game!
Pros:
- The game is chaotic, but the player retains enough control for the chaos to feel fun and gratifying. Initially mutations feel very random but with the help of the incubator the player really has quite a bit of sway over what qualities a new fish will have. This is further exemplified by having the goal of the game being a 'seemingly' impossible task that slowly shows itself to be possible through mutation control.
- The game had some emergent gameplay in the form of leading fish with food to form 'groups'. For example, after spamming food just to feed all my fish the fish would swarm that spot. Using that knowledge I was able to separate out the fish I was trying to mutate from my 'money' fish which I found to be very cool.
Cons:
- Fish feel pointless after getting turtles. With the goal being tied to just turtles, and the incubator only working with fish of the species, I quickly just didn't care about my other fish after getting two turtles. While you must buy lower tier fish to get to the turtle, mid tier fish like the Anglerfish didn't feel worth it.
- The game had some performance issues on my end. Every time a mutation occurred my game would hang for maybe 0.25 sec. While not a big deal in the beginning, it quickly spiraled out of control once I had a lot of fish and was feeding them high toxicity food. I sold a bunch of fish so it wasn't as severe but it's something that did ultimately hinder me as a player.
Again, you should be very proud of this as your first game! Well done and hope you continue to participate in future game jams.