Hey, bit of a long one. Just wanted to post this forum here to explain why sometimes you can pick up an object early, and sometimes you can't. We used to think it was rng. I reached out to the developer of this game, and he clarified a few things through code.

Here's the beginning of the tweet string. https://twitter.com/NH_Wooktent/status/1344529402206580738?s=19

As you play the game, you'll notice you get slightly bigger over time. If you focus, you can see the little growth spurts after collecting some objects. (We're calling this growth "popoffs") So basically, every absorbable object has a specific mass. The player's mass is determined by the radius of the player. You can only grow when you reach a mass twice as large as the mass you were after the last popoff. Basically, there is a parameter that measures your mass progress in-between popoffs. When a popoff occurs, the parameter gets set back at zero. So, when the parameter is your last popoff mass times 2, you grow and parameter = 0 again. That is very important, because that means if you grow from absorbing a small object, let's say the mass of it is 2, then your next popoff will occur when you absorb 4 more mass. But if you grow from a large object, let's say a mass of 5, your next popoff will come when you get 10 more mass. So if you want to popoff earlier and more times, popping off with small objects will make your next popoff come sooner. And more importantly, each object is described as absorbable depending on how many times you have popped off. Sometimes you will want to use this to your advantage, like when you want to absorb the elusive "Early Lantern" in the first level. The lantern is only absorbable after 15 popoffs. If you can popoff 15 times before getting to the lantern, you can absorb it. Most of the time, people only popoff 13 or 14 times, thus not getting the lantern. But those who could get the lantern popped off exactly 15 times right before touching the lantern. Clearly they popped off on the table using smaller objects so that they would popoff sooner and more times before reaching the lantern. (For a little extra nugget of info, the cup glasses on the table require 4 popoffs to absorb.) So routing what objects to popoff to will be important when dealing with the problematic levels such as Beginning, Arcadia secret level, and Cafe Internet. A bit more info is in the Twitter string if you are curious.