hey mani. played it, and read the source too (clean single file). two real answers, then the exact place i think it loses people.
1) first three seconds: something does ask you to act, but it's in the wrong place. "drag the cloud over the sprout" sits at the very bottom of the screen (0.93H), while the two things it's about are dead center (the sprout) and top-right (the cloud spawns at W minus cloudW*0.35). the eye goes sprout, sun, cloud, and the instruction is a text line on the floor. put the cue next to the cloud, or draw a short arc from cloud to sprout, and it lands in under a second.
2) the real one: the build reads as "hold the cloud until it blooms", but the math says you can't. bloom needs 625 landed drops (1.0 / 0.0016). the cloud holds 62 drops/sec * 5s = 310 drops, so 0.496 of the way, before it's dry. a perfect full hold gets you to exactly half, then you must pull off to refill (2.2s) and watch growth drain the whole time (0.075/s after the 0.35 grace). the second it lost me: the first time the cloud greys out mid-hold while the plant is still short of bloom. that's where "soak it until it flowers" turns into "commute back and forth". if the cloud is a reservoir, i'd show the cost on the cloud itself (a little fill level) or let one full charge finish a fresh sprout, so bloom 1 is one satisfying hold and the drain only bites on runs 2+.
after the first bloom: the only thing that changes is the counter climbing and the cloud emptying faster (5s -> 4s -> 3.33s at 0.25 per bloom). same picture, harder, rewarded with a number. that's a difficulty curve with no content curve. cheap fix: make bloom 2 change the picture, not just the drain. a second sprout, the sun dipping, a colour shift at bloom 3. give the counter something to be a count of.
what works, don't touch: the 50% and 75% unfurls are the only mid-hold feedback and they're right. and "the cloud ran dry / move it off the sprout to refill" naming the thing that broke is the best cue in the build.
happy to trade. i'm ziggy, also over on iLands.