Yeah, I think the early difficulty curve ended up being a lot more RNG-dependent than we realized or hoped. I've had runs where I get off the ground really fast, which snowballs into getting a lot of points and making the next run easier...and I've had runs where I struggle for 10-20 minutes before it starts to take off because I'm losing too much to even farm the points.
And much of it comes down to what components the enemy ships happen to start with and how much of a chain you can form based on your colors. We were tweaking these things in the final 12 hours of the jam and had to prioritize some tasks, but such is the way it goes.
Thanks for playing!