Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!
This was pretty fun to play! I kept going from "OMG EAT EAT EAT" to "OMG KILL KILL KILL" over and over and just had a smile on my face the whole time. However, twice I accidentally fat fingered hitting R while trying to press other buttons (E, 4, etc) and reset my game. Instead of putting the reset on a key, make it just an option in the menu?
So originally, my feedback was going to primarily be about how to have some control over what fish eat. However, as I was writing in and thinking of other things I thought could be useful, I realized this wasn't going to be adequate. So I'm going to just keep the food stuff as it is, but after it I'm going to dive into the new stuff.
Overall, the one thing I wish I had was control over what each fish would eat so that it could be easier to get specific mutations. I really felt this in the second level when I wanted to get one fish to upgrade with tank food, but everything else kept eating it. Of course, as fish it wouldn't entirely make sense to control what they eat. Instead, what I think should happen is two-fold:
1. Over time, fish should prefer food that relates to how they're evolving. So after evolving a few stages, a pure DPS fish should only want Meat, while a pure Tank fish should only want Ore.
2. There should be a way to feed a specific fish more directly. For example, perhaps you can click on a fish and directly feed it with a cooldown for using the ability on a per-fish basis (Something like the Chum, but more direct and singular).
With these, it would be a lot easier to maintain your fish. In addition, neither method would make it easy to get food to the extra fish that give you stuff (like the turtle and relic fish).
Actually, speaking of those extra fish... I didn't quite understand what relics did. For the most part, I was just dropping them in and letting the fish have at them. I'd love it if I could save up relics in an inventory and look them over to see what effects they have. Then if you incorporate the ideas above, you could make it that you can just give relics to specific fish (not on a cooldown, though, so it's more like you're "equipping" a fish with a relic). That way, the player can ensure relics go to the fish they want to have them. You'd also then be able to make more types of relics!
Okay, onto the new stuff.
As I was writing about wanting to know how much damage the player could do with left click, it occurred to me how I also wanted to know the stats of my individual fish. As far as I can tell, there's no system in game for doing this. You can't even click on a fish, as doing so just drops food. This leads me to realize that to do some of the things I suggested above would take some changes to how the game plays. So rather than let you have to figure that out on your own, I want to provide it as a suggestion.
Right now, the player chooses which food they want to drop and then left clicks to do so. However, I think there should be an option to not drop food at all. This could then be the mode you have to use when you want to attack an enemy fish (so if you're in food mode, you won't be attacking fish). You can also click on individual fish to bring up a menu about that specific fish. This menu could not only give stats and let you directly feed a fish or assign a relic, but you could even NAME the fish. That would then make it all the more devastating if you lose the fish, as the ghost fish would then carry that name in the background. I would say that while in this menu, gameplay should pause so the player doesn't feel rushed.
One thing I almost forgot to bring up.... when a fish gets an upgrade, I recommend having a confirmation for the upgrade chosen. I had times where I was spamming food, only for an upgrade screen to pop up and I hit something I may not have wanted. Having a confirmation screen that intentionally puts the buttons in a place where the player is just unlikely to be spam clicking. I would say along the very top of the screen. This would be normally be a weird place to put them, but it would also avoid confirming a wrong upgrade.
Alright, I think that covers it! Good luck with the game and I hope to see more of it!