Your pathfinding isn't maximizing the score but the number of step taken , also It take sometimes more than 3 minutes to find the path and I don't even have an absurd amount of bounces .
But apart from that your game is really great .
Yeah couldn't really afford to put too much space for the pathfinding and thought that maxing the steps would be good enough. Will definitely improve on it for the next version without the jam limitations. I guess there is something extra repetitiveness going on if it takes that long. It does go through all possibilities but it should never get that outrageously long.