thank you so much for the kind words! <3
I think you're right that one path to better tuning could be to just go increasingly crazy with items and depth/exploration and let the TNT/ladder just be powerful for this phase of the game. When we were scaffolding out the structure of the game world we gave ourselves space for x3 the amount we ended up actually using, but all of the mechanics only really game together on the last night, so by the time we sat down to design the world and tweak the items etc. we just didn't have enough time to use all of the space.
We had tons of ideas for what a more fleshed out world could look like, like block types that required certain items to break through so they would sort of gate you above a particular area and force you to explore and collect money with your current tools before proceeding. That was ditched partly for time and partly because the 7 day time limit was kind of at odds with that.
Anyway, thanks again for playing :D