HUGE progress from last year. The game movement and control of the game feels a lot more polished. Still needs a little work there, especially with the world rotation. That can whip around kind of suddenly.
One of the improvements you mentioned before we played was the replacement of the grid system with a freeform placement. That was a game changer. It's such a more pleasant experience putting things where we feel they would fit the best now.
Also the cursor doesn't quite point where things are placed, and while we can see the square highlighted to know where items will go, it still throws us off a bit.
We can definitely see how the visuals are all unified along the same theme, with the types of colors and softness of shapes. It does well to make everything feel like it fits. That said, the mission task list in the top right and the dialog in the bottom right are a little too subdued so that they are easy to miss and forget. It might be a good idea to make them stand out a little bit more and have a more noticeable visual cue when they appear or when things change on them.
On the subject of the checklist, we noticed that sometimes a task would come up with a number of things to put on the map and it doesn't count things we put on the map before the task came up. Not sure if that was by design but we were like "but we have more than that number already."
In terms of the UI, we love having the option to make the HUD disappear, though we did find that by accident. It might be good to have a key reference that could be opened to see at a glance what keys do what and then closed when not needed.
As a test to see the loading system, we tried to load our previous game, though it didn't seem like the save carried over what we placed last time, so we tried to get back out to start a new game but the only option to get out was "Exit Game" which exited the entire game. An "Exit to Menu" option would be helpful.
At a certain point, we unlocked the little wooden signs and those are really cute. One suggestion for those would be the ability for players to type messages on those signs, so they could say things if players hover the mouse over them. For example, if we make a path that leads from one area to another, we could type "To Cozy Garden" or something like that on a sign placed at the beginning of the path.
The addition of new minigames, like catching the butterflies, was a really nice touch to keep things interesting. At the end of our stream, we found scaring the wiggly guys out of the water was a bit challenging. We managed it, but it might be a bit frustrating for more casual players just looking for a cozy experience. Also, it might help to give more explicit messaging as to what happened when players don't win that section. We didn't know we failed that part at first.
Finally, we really liked the music. The volume and the vibe were a perfect fit. It never felt like it got old or repetitive. Not really any notes on that. And obviously, we love that we can pet the kibus! This game is definitely something Squab would play on her own for hours to unwind. We're really looking forward to seeing more progress and the full game when it releases. Keep up the great work! We absolutely love it!