Thank you so much for breaking all of this down! :D Your suggestions for the specific tutorial phrase replay is a great idea instead of looking for "between mosquito spawns" window. It could behave exactly like the mobile version does (tap and hold 2 finger anywhere anytime to restart) where we change this to click with both mouse buttons for 3 seconds anytime to restart from the tutorial phase and change the whole function to tap once to hear again this tip or double tap to continue with the next tip.
Regarding the whoosh sound and cursor tracking: thank you for pointing out how tricky it feels on desktop without a continuous radar. To share a bit about how it's designed under the hood, it follows the mosquito's logarithmic volume gain so you hear the missed sound exactly where it happened to help with triangulation. Because spatial audio relies so heavily on your setup, it can sometimes be tough to catch without headphones.
To give some context on the design intent for the "gulp" sound effect: when the mosquito lands, it triggers a 2-second heartbeat that is your "Mosquash" window, and the gulp only plays if you don't double tap and fail to kill it. That said, your alternative idea about a prickling or rising-pitch sound instead of a human-like swallowing sound is super interesting and this could be a live draining situation. Instead of giving player 2 second heartbeat it could become a 5 second heartbeat plus high-pitch water flow or slurping draining 1 HP per second instead of direct -5 HP and "gulp" sound effect. The end of loop "gulp could become a sound like satisfaction of drinking blood sound, like a sound effect after drinking when you were extremely thirsty. I don't know how to explain :) This gives us a lot to think about for sound design!
Thank you again for taking the time to share such thoughtful feedback—it means the world to us as we work to make the game better.