Thank you so much! Initially, the plan was to make each animal individually controllable, but that seemed like it was going to lead to lock-and-key sort of design, so our programmer recommended a "layer of indirection" which is where the Food mechanic came from, and it became a pivotal part of the game design, along with the Animal abilities (virtually unchanged from the initial concept) and the whole game being a strange mix of a traditional Sokoban and The Incredible Machine/Contraption Maker/Fantastic Contraption.