Neat idea! I had difficulty using the rotating block in any useful way - I used it on exactly one level (which had 2 inputs), and it maybe helped me pump them all through my one path, but I'm not completely sure it increased my throughput as things sometimes ended up flowing the wrong way and such. After that, I mostly just stuck to using a single input and building a big pipeline for it. My scores on the first 3 levels were: 330/1000 (took 2 tries, used rotator)/5700 (using just 1 input). I ended up playing through level 11 or so, had a massive 26K score on level 6. I couldn't figure out how the numbers' velocity worked, one time I had a hundred nodes approaching 4K after the last multiplier, sitting completely still on my pipe, not a single one making it to the end (total score was only like 3K :D). I liked in the later levels needing to figure out a way to get a little income in order to start building my actual plan.
Viewing post in Math Factory: not an educational game jam comments
One thing the game definitely doesn't have is careful tuning. Submitted 10 minutes before the deadline and I didn't realize I wouldn't be able to make changes afterwards of course the alternative would be not submitting at all oh well. I think the rotator is potentially useful in the situation where there's so many adders and multipliers there's no hope of snaking a path through all of them in which case you would have two paths or more and then they use the rotator to combine the various inputs. This would happen right at the end. However due to the previous comment I have not had a chance to play test whether or not the cost of the rotator outweighs the benefit here. Certainly it might depend on the stage which actually is a sign of good design I think. If it doesn't ever, then bad design. ha!
I've already fixed a number of bugs, But I'm resisting really getting in there too deeply while it's still in frozen mode for the jam so that I can integrate useful comments like yours holistically rather than being pulled one direction than the other as different points are brought up. Such as: some people don't like the mechanic where you have fewer and fewer pipes to build with later on.
I thought having less pipes and having to boot-strap to buying stuff was interesting, but on reflection, I'm not completely sure the game is better for it, as it just takes time away from doing what you actually want to be doing on a level. On the other hand, having a little scarcity is probably good, I did like being rewarded with a feeling of "now I can build absolutely anything" once I got my income stream built up, whereas on the first levels I sometimes ran into a "oh, I don't quite have enough pipes to build what I'm trying to build, and have no money" situation, and the scarcity forced me (in later levels) to find a workaround for that problem... so, maybe I've argued myself back into thinking it's a good thing, hah! Anyway, just some more vague feedback to (not?) help you decide what to do =).
I think the scarcity probably works better if you have more time to work with it. Thus it would make a lot more sense to give you more time on the later levels. As it is it's a challenge to be able to build up enough money quickly enough to be able to do interesting things with it later on in a level that's super scarce . One thing that didn't really come through here very clearly is that it's meant to have a fast and frenetic build phrase followed by a three times more important automated phase where the game runs with whatever layout you have. That's also probably the secret as to why the rotator is useful. As is I think the automated phase is actually super brief .