Thanks for taking the time to give me some feedback, I really appreciate it. I think you're pretty spot on with your analysis. I'm new to gamedev and clicker games so i was kinda winging it with the design, but I knew what vibe and emotion I wanted to convey and I feel like I generally met my goal there.
My biggest lesson through this has been to include a thorough explanation and/or tutorial in my games. a lot of the elements were put in as indicators but with no explanation of what they were indicating...it was purposeful but It didn't quite translate how i'd hoped. Trust/obscurity turning red for example does lower the overall speed at which you accrue points, but under the hood I designed the game to never actually punish to the point of losing points. I actually designed it to basically go on forever. There is no end game state or win condition and the math won't break untill long after the sunn burns out (in theory). Also, the menu typing can be fast forwarded with the space bar to speed up that wait time, but I agree no one wants to watch a cut scene to change the volume.
I think if i were to try something like this again or expand on it in the future, I would start with a better in-game tutorial and then expand the prestige store to make it playable for longer. I think my biggest downfall on this project was that I got the vibe across too well without explaining why...i made things intentionally cryptic and players didn't really realize how intentional it was or did't have the context that i wasn't able to put in.
At any rate thank you for taking the time to play and comment...it was definitely a learning experience.