Thanks for playing! I think you actually described exactly how things already work. I'm wondering if what you actually experienced was that the first time you hit three clowns was after spending your final token, and you didn't have enough points saved to buy more tokens. The loss screen appears immediately if you have no tokens and not enough points to buy more tokens and there's no feedback to explain what's happening, so it may have looked like getting the three clowns triggered the loss condition directly. Sorry about the confusion there, the loss condition could definitely use a clarifying animation :)
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Did I really? Lol
Now that you say, i don't remember if i've seen an actual game over screen, so i think i did not, but i also remember a moment where i had to start like from scratch after having 3 clowns. I can't test for some days now again, but i will check it later, so i can adjust my ratings :)