Here are four fish I made for four prospective upcoming levels. Art isn't my specialty, but at least I feel like I got the expressions right. The black shadow part is the kaiju form that scales up. If you stop each fish from mutating into a kaiju for long enough, it swims away, saved, and the next one will come. The seahorse is probably going to be the most challening, due to its size and the waypoints I'll give it.

There will also be a limited use "de-mutate" power for the robot fish that you'll be able to acquire in a simple store interface.

Adjusted the balance a bit (robot fish takes 2 seconds to digest now instead of 5) and added a garbage count.

Future design plans go like this:

After keeping the fish at least one mutation away from "fish kong" for a long enough period, it will swim off, add itself to a rescue tally (points proportional to how little de-mutation it needed), and another fish, or several, will swim into view. New kinds of fish, new looks, new paths, different speeds. Keep them safe for long enough, and the cycle will keep going.

Right now I don't have the art resources or the time to make any of that look remotely decent, but the goal for this was basically to make a one level concept demo.

Updated the game with the robot fish mechanic. Using this, and requiring digestion time allows for a much wider potential ecosystem of game mechanics going forward.

Possibilities include a store to buy stuff like better digestion capacity or longer range targeting.

And of course, eventually more levels with more kinds of fish.

Still in the hyper casual phase. I wanted a more sophisticated mechanic to clean up the trash (robot fish, or garbage machine, or something that reuires occasional maintenance), but started later than I intended and streamlined it to be less confusing.

Plans:

-difficulty curve begins a little too slowly, it may need a kick.
-when multiple levels become a thing, faster and more erratically swimming fish can be introduced (one per level is still the intention)