The core gameplay loop is fine, but the upgrades need balancing. I think changing the scaling to better match rising costs would fix most of my issues. Currently in the time I doubled my point generation, all costs increased like tenfold.
The value upgrades / point generation scale really slow, to the point your percentual progress per loop decreases (if you don’t increase its duration). I managed to get to quadrillions (5% ! through the game in like 60-90 minutes?) at which point I was getting 0.06% progress per 30 second loop.
On that note, time upgrades are useless as each loop is free, and length doesn’t seem to have any effect. In fact, they might be detrimental if you can restart fast enough get more orbs than you’d generate in that time. That is because:
Collection upgrades quickly reach a point where you no longer need any more, as you collect the orbs quicker than they generate, even if you do put most of your points into generation. Neither do I see the utility of the magnet, when you can move your mouse so quickly and it doesn’t seem viable over just getting larger collection area.
Lastly, what kind of combination is: slow orb generation, capped orb amount AND orb decay? having both decay and a hard cap feels scammy.