Very promising game. I agree with everything the above user said, had the exact same thoughts. This comment is going to be me largely repeating them in my own words (started writing prior to reading theirs)
For the early game, the things that I initially struggled with understanding were needing to interact with the flowers to recharge (I thought the flowers were water drops), confusion over why symbols were appearing in the queue for WAS keys but not D (At times when tabbing back to the game, I was trying to do WASD to move and didn't fully understand the resources yet), and confusion over where the NPCs mentioned in the guide were (didn't realize until the uncommon rocks that there were things other than flowers "under" the rocks; flowers under rocks was intuitive enough, people I didn't expect)
Pause before loop is the most needed QOL addition, and reworking queue management in general is probably second.
"Exposing more information" is the biggest thing the game needs though, period; not in a QOL way, but in terms of being able to enjoy and know how to properly play the game on a fundamental level. I want to be able to mouse over my stats and resources (STR, ROCK, LOVE, etc) and see how much exp it'll cost to level up, what multipliers they're applying to things, how those multipliers are calculated, etc, and hover over tasks to see their costs.
It's hard to make informed decisions about things without that information, for example:
- "How much motivation would doing [this thing] cost right now with my current stats? Can I make it over there and finish it before needing more motivation?"
- "Which rock should I tackle next? Not all rocks of the same rarity are equal, and I can't tell which has more 'health.' How do I prioritize efficiently without wasting loops checking the 'last rock hit' health bar?"
- "How much rock-breaking power is STR stat contributing? How worth it is it to spend a bit of time training STR in the loop prior to breaking? How much experience does each action gain?"
- "How much rock-breaking power is LOVE contributing? I am selling LOVE (boosts rock-breaking speed) for GOLD to exchange for more MOTIVATION (rock-breaking time). How much should I exchange to maintain the best rate of breaking rocks?"
I haven't read the guide you wrote in the description, but I imagine some of the game is easier for you to understand what the best course of action is, primarily because you know that underlying math. If we knew it too, we'd be able to figure out the optimization puzzles much easier, without needing guides or tips.