I think the difficulty as it currently is, is just fine, and perfect for the game's current scope. That final level is just about the hardest I think I could go with the current mechanics. But you'd need to make things harder if you wanted to expand the game and wanted it not to be repetitive. Or, maybe not necessarily harder, but you'd need to at least introduce new mechanics. I think Kitchen Job is a bit too hard, more specifically in terms of how punishing it is for bad gameplay (like, you have to really be on top of things to keep making more and more points each round to keep increasing your skills, since they reset each day. Honestly, I'm not the biggest fan of that, it makes the game feel too stressful for me, since I know one slipup could mean all my progress gets trashed.)
Viewing post in The Cheer Must Go On (Game Jam) comments
So Kitchen Job was too hard and kind of boring, but Cheer Must Go On is better? I'll take that, it means I'm getting a better feel for what works.
I am sorry that the point reductions felt like a punishment though; I meant that to be a joke on Ariel - the harder she works the worse it gets, and somebody (you!) keeps messing with her clothes.
It's not a nice setup because it means you'd have to laugh at Ariel and not with her. At the time I figured that from player's perspective, a real victory isn't a spotless kitchen and a tidy uniform - it's Ariel facing inspection in a soaking wet mess with nothing to wear but short wet tee shirt.
I'm probably terrible. I do agree that Kitchen Job isn't quite there yet, though lately I've been wondering if there's a way to remake it with better art and make the comedic perspective actually work in a way that is funny but not malicious or punishing.
I think the more important thing to note about Kitchen Job isn't that it was harder, but that it was more tedious(aka boring), and more punishing. You have to get better and better scores multiple times in a row to make progress in your upgrades, and each run takes a lot of time, with a lot more time spent waiting for actions to complete than actually making decisions and playing the game. if each task had a minigame attached that sped up the time, that'd make things a lot better in that regard, since you wouldn't just be sitting around anymore. Unlike Cheer Must Go On, where there's very few breaks in the action, and you get as many tries as you want at each level if you fail, with completing a level unlocking a more exposed cheer outfit permanently.
Seeing as you're controlling Ariel, I agree that it'd be best to not have your goal to be to humiliate her, and to have her humiliation be punishing you in terms of gameplay experience. Gameplay-wise, it'd be satisfying to see yourself transition from a dirty kitchen with stacks of dirty plates to a clean one with lots of plates cleaned, but that doesn't mesh with what you're going for: making the player humiliate Ariel.
There's two ways to go with this: Either reorient what you think the player's (horny) goal should be so it aligns with the player's gameplay goal. So, your goal would be to clean as many dishes as possible to get points and increase your skills slowly over time, and getting new, skimpier outfits helps with that, since it attracts Daniel to come into the kitchen with dishes more often (and you wouldn't want to have the potential downside of making you lose points from excess dirty dishes).
Or, and this probably falls under the category of "being an entirely new game", but you could make the player not be controlling Ariel, and instead, you'd be working against Ariel throughout her normal shift to humiliate her and make sure she can't do her job. You'd be controlling "the world", and you could make various inconvenient things happen, like causing Daniel to come in at inconvenient moments, making the sink spigot burst, the mop bucket tip over, or cupboards to close and snag/tear her clothes, that sort of thing. And you'd have to time them at the right moments to actually "catch" her (like, the spigot breaking while she's at the sink, soaking her shirt and stopping her dish progress). That'd really go hard into the ENF angle, and could definitely be fun, if you feel up to making a game like that.