Here are my results for "Ex Nihilo". I finally got in the top 3 for Audio!

Successes

• The procedural music!
• Completed it within 24 hours. It's better when I actually have the time to work on it some more, but if I'm going to have that restriction I might as well embrace it.
• I'm getting better with particle effects, and in particular I came up with a particle-based thing for the planets to give them a random "texture" when they are generated (actually a paused particle system).

Opportunities

• Despite some successes in the graphics, it's still one of my worst categories. Not THE worst (this time), but it could have definitely used some extra flourishes or interesting visual effects to go with everything else.
• I realize that I didn't communicate the beginning very well. I really, REALLY wanted above all else to literally start the game from nothing on a blank screen. The problem is that you have to hold down the right mouse button to create the first planet, and it's very difficult to do that by experimentation (nobody ever HOLDS a button when they're testing controls; they just click). This clearly caused some confusion, and I'm sure my Fun category suffered a bit from it (it was my worst category).
• I really wanted to have more things to click on and do, and more music (maybe just a little more would have even pushed it to 1st place in Audio). I'm happy with what I made in 24 hours, but there's a LOT of room for improvement.
• I didn't quite learn my lesson from my LD 38 entry, "Nucleu" (actually a very similar entry to this in a way, even down to completing it within 24 hours). The problem with both games was that I had very specific goals in order to progress, which of course were not communicated to the player per se, and so it was possible to miss them and get stuck or just take longer to progress than expected. I should have had things advance automatically at some points, especially once the comets started to appear (you have to click on them 4 times in order to progress, but I should have just made it also progress after a certain number of them pass by, like 8). The Fun rating clearly suffered due to this.

All in all, not terrible. I'm still pleased with how it came out. Thanks for everyone who played it!