This game made my brain explode. (at first)
But once I got a hang of it, I found it to be a very unique idea!
This game really tests skillsets I don't think get tested very much in games. It seems to be a game about processing large amounts of information quickly, working off of incomplete data (future grems), and occasionally making snap judgement calls based on probabilities. The only game I can think of that is like this is a stock market game called "Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator", but I imagine there must be other stock market like games that are also about rapid information processing..
I find the powerups in particular to be interesting, as they really don't directly make you any more points, but instead just process the information a bit more in order to help you make better decisions. I find that entire premise as a powerup to be a very cool idea. I can't really think of another game of this style with powerups like this, so it's actually a very novel idea.
I think the main things I would comment on as a potential critique is that I think the learning curve is quite steep. It's actually not as complicated as it seems at first glance, but it took me quite a few playthroughs to get a sense of how score is actually calculated. Until then, even with the manual, scores felt very arbitrary and sometimes random. The tutorial does help, but immediately after the tutorial I didn't quite get what was happening.
The large volume of information you need to process/memorize is very overwhelming at first and may turn off some people. However, since processing relatively large amounts of information is the point of the game, you cannot really simplify the core design too much without sacrificing the appeal of the game IMO.
This is really a scope thing, but if I were to recommend ways to expand upon the idea in a larger game, starting off with simple matches with maybe only 1 trait, or a smaller pool of traits, and then scaling up to the full game would be a good way to get players to grapple with the game mechanics before the game becomes more and more complex.
Another critique is that I also think that there are too many situations I end up in where I end up with no possible good matches.. I don't know if the game already does this, but if the game generated with a pool of grems that always has a potential series of good or perfect matchups, I think it would make the game a lot deeper, as you would need to also try to predict what traits the new grems may have. It will also make any bad matchups left over feel more like the player's fault.
At the moment, there are too many times where I only have bad matchups left and felt unlucky.
Anyways, I think the idea brings something very fresh to the table. It was a good game for me to crunch my brain a little bit to try to figure out and form some strategies around. If you have any strategies in this game I'm actually quite curious as I want to compare strategies
Oh and the profile descriptions are really funny. The one where he just says "I lie everday" made me lol for real.