Your quicktime-events idea is a really good idea for design. The pacing is weird though: by the time I reached “Continental,” my auto growing was faster than my clicking, fast enough that I didn’t click at all in any of the following phases. I spent a handful of seconds on each phase before I was offered to go to the next one. By the time I scrolled upgrades to see if anything new appeared I was already ready for the next phase. I reached the end of the game (100% of phase 22) without seeing the prestige menu.
Really useful feedback, thanks for playing through! Moved the advance button out of the click area. The prestige thing is on me — the Genome Lab is the whole late-game system and easy to miss if you don't know to look for it. Added a popup at Phase 13 that explains it now. The auto pacing is something I'm still tuning — appreciate the detail on when it started feeling off.