Wow! Thank you so much for both playing and commenting!
I definitely locked myself out of a lot of smarter mechanics early in development with some poor decisions. The placement rules, the permadeath, and the placement pains are pretty much direct results of that. I'm a novice programmer and I had never taken a product to the polish phase before, so I left a lot of time for that (hence the visual effects) and let the gameplay languish a bit.
Thanks again!