Thank you very much!
After the jam is over, I was thinking I might have a go at optimisation, and make it go on for longer. The early limit is there for 2 reasons: game starts breaking with lots of people, so I had to cap it. The other reason is I felt the game should be completeable in under 15 minutes for the jam, but if I end up still working on it my plan is to expand it into a proper incremental :)