Hey devs,

Played this in Chrome.

For the game, I'm mostly confused. Tried playing without reading anything besides the basic controls (arrow keys) at first, and I couldn't tell what was going on at all. The instructions were fine for basic controls, but I had no idea I was color matching at first. The dot in the center being different colors didn't register at all until I'd played through once. It might be better to project a semi-transparent match piece in an empty slot on the selected line. I went back to the itch page to see if there were more details, though that didn't help much. Eventually I lined up two of the same matches for a combo by chance and saw that grant points.

I played about 5 times in total. Let me describe my understanding of the game. The overall goal is to line up combinations of the same color pairs to earn points. I assume filling the pink bar wins? I was never able to do this. The instability gauge seems to be the lose condition. It rises whenever any line falls below the bottom of the play area, or when making an incorrect color match. Making an incorrect color match also removes the existing line you were trying to match, allowing you to potentially join together matching combos.

Here's where the mechanics don't mesh. There's no way to decrease instability. Making proper matches doesn't help you not lose, and it does barely anything to increase your score and help you win. You also tend to have to make incorrect matches to remove lines that are in between matching pairs, causing you to gain instability just to try and gain points. You'll want a system for decreasing instability. Tweaking numbers for the gauges might also help. It seems like the correct way to play is to place incorrect matches to remove rows between matches you've made for combos. But this punishes the player with instability for making correct choices. You may want to rethink how players are meant to remove rows, or change the scoring system entirely. Maybe matched pairs that reach the bottom don't increase instability, or do so very little. Maybe instability increases over time instead of when pieces fall off, and matched combos remove a chunk of it. Could even let solo pieces increase instability still, but matched pairs don't. It might also help not to have the cursor reset to the top position after placing every piece. All this does is force the player to push down a whole bunch more, it doesn't serve the purpose of the puzzle. Maybe it would also make sense to have the score and instability gauges combine into one tug-of-war bar. Would need numbers to be tweaked, but at least it would save a little on screen space.

Anyway, hope any of that helps out.

vA031-Win64

So the 'victory' condition is to fill the score bar by creating combo's (sequences of two or more identical pairs) before.

The instability bar fills up every time 'junk' is made by mismatched pairs, or a pair's cut off.
And the instability bar is drained (the same amount) the score is increased.

Every time 'junk' is ejected from the sequence, the strand collapses, potentially creating more combinations.

So the eco. is deciding if making junk to enable larger combo's will fill the score bar faster than the instability hits its limit.  
Generally I found myself that making combos of size 2 while setting up to make sets of three *almost* worked. Cheated to reduce the junk penalty and started having more success. (Fake ease/easiness due to practise?)

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feedback: 

(UI/visually) have 'instability' and score extend from opposite ends of the same bar, to make the two literally oppose each other. 
Try to make the instability less static/friendly so that it's meaning is clearer.
( ie: increasing instability grows tentacle like strings over the score meter. The tips/growing end of which thins out instead of pulls back when the instability is driven back.  A (hidden) bead marking displaces the tentacles at the tip of the score bar, for clarity.  I think this can be accomplished with a layered sprite and masks, avoiding actually calculating splines, though splines *would* allow the tips to wiggle...)

(UI/criticism) I kept getting confused that the next piece wasn't shown above, even though I 'know' that it's represented by the colour of the cursor. 
I like the idea of showing a ghost/shadow of the piece about to be placed.

(criticism) combos didn't feel that rewarding. And I was often confused why this resulted in mismatched pairs sitting in the sequence after.

(UI) make the cursor mouse driven (or tracking). This would make placing the next piece following a combo much easier.

(gameplay) make the remnants of completed combos eligible for stronger combos. Be it a ladder like 2048, or just a +1 length bonus for every time it is used in another combo.

(gameplay/visually) Add a ball/motor that is pulling drags the end of the strand at the bottom into the cutting enzyme. Then on combos make 'it let go' and kick it up the strand where it will then descend (at its normal speed) until it reaches the end of the strand again.

(gameplay) make the different 'junk' affect the instability value differently to increase final complexity. 
( ie: unstable mismatched pairs cost 5, cut-off single bases cost 3, cut-off matched-pairs cost 1? )

(criticism) Early on, too often I found myself unable to place a piece and had to wait to lose. Later I'd get screens without a match for any of the pieces I held.
(gameplay) perhaps allowing players to pair and 'eject' the piece they're holding with the one in the cursor as "an advanced" strategy would mitigate this.