This was certainly an experience, and I'm afraid I don't understand the objective. Real talk though... Under your tech specs, you mention "Overconfidence and self doubt" and I'd like to share that I've been there. My LD34 game was just bad, I even wrote inside the credits to my LD40 game "I am not proud of this", and even after learning a ton over the years, my LD46 entry was such a flop. You said you weren't happy with this game, and I'm sorry to hear that. Recently I've been struggling to make my games more intuitive. I had a comment earlier today where the player didn't progress in my game at all, and it honestly hurt to read. They didn't provide great feedback, which also didn't help. Now that I've just been put in those shoes, not understanding the game at all, allow me to provide as much feedback as possible.
From my perspective, it appears the objective was to interact with the popup menus, possibly navigating them as a tree with some specific path ending up with the game's conclusion. (Or perhaps the conclusion is vague, open to interpretation, or unimplemented) A lot of the menus were spinny colorful ones, which didn't seem to lead me deeper into the tree, so I think the objective is to simply close those ones and move on. The theme slaughter seemed to lead somewhere, but I'm not sure, and I'm not going to click on 1,000 more themes to find out. If it does lead somewhere, keep it small, and if it doesn't go insane with it. Make the number, like a billion or something. You want to make sure the player knows what is and isn't intended, and making the numbers absurd is a good way to do that. In a similar analogy, if a pressure plate opens a door in an adventure game, but the door *sloooooowly* closes when the player steps off it, they might assume with enough speed or some strategy they could make it under the closing door just in time. If that's not the intended solution, you want the door to close really fast so they don't even attempt it.
I also had the "NOT IMPLEMENTED" screen, which I'll take at face value and assume it's not implemented and indeed safe to close out of. If it actually *did* lead somewhere, I don't know what you were expecting the player to do other than close out of it.
The transparent windows is interesting, but leads to some issues when recording. I'd rather not showcase my messy desktop, or whatever discord messages I have open. I know most people won't be recording though. On the topic of transparent windows, it leads to issues clicking on other windows behind the transparent one. That being said, I've seen very few games with transparent windows, and it's certainly a neat gimmick.
You definitely make the most experimental Ludum Dare game's I've played. I never know what to expect! I know how it feels to make a game you aren't proud of, and I know it's difficult to think positively about it, but you can't let it weigh you down. Whenever one of my jam games fell apart, I took notes. Seriously reflect on the things that went right and wrong. Make a postmortem! If you learn something from every jam, surely the next game you make will be better!
Perhaps there's some solace to be found in the fact that *I'm* still struggling to make my games intuitive. After all, the bonus spool that took you 10 minutes or so to collect was supposed to be a simple puzzle... I sure messed that one up!
Anyway, at this point I'm just rambling. I recorded a video of myself playing the game, and I hope this provides as much feedback as possible. Cheers, and good luck with the next one!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtNucshleDs