Best game of the jam that I've played so far! It hits really nicely because I'm playing it after getting weary of the complexities of Evolve. I think it does a great job sticking to the themes, but I was pretty lost after the second stage in terms of understanding what upgrades were doing. I only played until stage 1 of the prestige, unsure how much the game changes after that.
As was mentioned in some of the other comments, QOL is a bit lacking, and I think that largely falls into two recurring problems: having to click too much, or having difficulty conveying information (obviously limited by the no-text theme). For the clicking, stage 1 should let you select a building and then default to that until it's changed, rather than having to click on the building and then the spot each time. I found stage 3 to have similar amounts of clicking, but the rotating planet and many tiles made it hard to click where I wanted, and having to click so many times on whichever species you're trying to win with was pretty annoying.
I think the information problem is difficult to solve while keeping consistent with the theme, but maybe there's some way to make the icons more clear? The first stage does a nice job of this, with the bolder coloring showing presumably more capable buildings.