This is a formidable game to approach from a cold start; the author has stated on Reddit that figuring it out is intended to be part of the experience. But once you wrap your head around it, it's a neat little gameplay loop alternating between powering up your captured squares and pressing forward to capture new ones. It has links to both of its inspirations within the game, and if you're completely stuck, playing a few minutes of one or both of those will give you a solid starting point; this didn't really click for me until I played a few minutes of Nanospread, at which point most of what I was trying to do became intuitive and the emoji instructions filled in much of the rest.

One minor spoiler which was not at all obvious to me from the game interface is that the box-outlined "⬆️" section of the right-hand statistics is a clickable element. In fact, clicking on it gets quickly crucial for progression. That said, I'll avoid further spoilers so that you can enjoy a unique and clever experience.