I've reached week 6 with development - that's half way through! A beta build has also been created: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1krVbpk_UH7qHYQLrN59NPMeombHNrYlS/view?usp=shari...

The past few days have been very active and productive.

One of the biggest goals was to tweak the bumper functionality so that its mechanics are visually better communicated. Previously, the game had a bumper, a plus sign and the number = the value of the force set displayed. These are basically three different assets for the same thing.
Now, the fungi bumpers are to be clicked to set the force instead of the plus sign. The set force appears as small dots on the stem of the fungus bumper. These dots can later be replaced with painted / glowing dots / stripes on the stem. However, I'm happy with this functionality. It's simple yet it hasn't lost its clarity about how it is played.

Some more visual enhancement involved tweaking Mushin's (the character's) wing animation as their movement was too large and unrealistic. As well as changing the animation of the bumpers to communicate the force. The bigger the force is, the bigger the bounciness of the bumper is. 

The reward system will need some more work as the rewards are not placed all over each level yet. However, the functionality is working properly now. There was a bug causing the number of rewards collected going back to 0 every time which has been fixed. Compulsory-to-collect sun globes are worth 1 point and the bonus ones 4. I might tweak this later on to be 5 points for the small ones and 10 for the big ones. Players like to get well-rewarded. 

Check out the latest updates in the following gameplay video: 

Besides these, I have also worked on the main menu - saving game state, so that players can continue playing where they left off. 
I used the PlayerPrefs function which is very good for this purpose. It saves the number of levels completed and the number of rewards collected as ints. It also has a HasSavedGame value which communicates whether there were any saved games. If not, the 'Continue' button in main menu is greyed out. 

My main focus for next week is the animations between the levels that tell the player how they're doing with restoring nature and brightness. Currently, the old art is used which is just placeholder. My plan is not to have a new scene showing the progress. Instead, making the bumpers disappear when a level is won and animating Mushin and the tree to be glowing up, the tree to gain some colour and some new leaves.