Hey! Dev here, thanks for the detailed feedback! 🛠️
You're absolutely right about the pause issue - it's coming in the next update (this weekend!) along with a new spider unit that will help with base defense and add more firepower. Should help balance things out.
About the issues you mentioned:
- Balance: You nailed it - currently max survivable is wave 8 out of 10. Working on tuning this!
- Drill/pickaxe upgrades: They DO work - upgraded drill breaks blocks in 1 hit instead of 2, but I hear you on the resource grind. At the moment it is random
- Fire upgrades/backpack: Still balancing this.
- Pause during upgrades: 100% adding this with the spider update
The game is still in active development, and your breakdown of the problems is super helpful - this is exactly the kind of feedback I need to see where the experience breaks down.
Thanks for sticking with it to wave 7 and taking the time to explain what's not working. Really appreciate it! 🙏
Spider update dropping this weekend - hope it helps!