Thanks for the feedback (and I apologize for the late response). The next time I decide to pick up this game again, I'll definitely take your thoughts into consideration, as I completely agree with what you had to say about the game.
As of now, I've not worked on the game for a while and probably won't for a good amount of time due to the workload I have, but as a temporary fix to kill some of the progression problems, I've made the increase of map prices linear rather than exponential. Though making the game shorter, it will give people a chance to at least see the maps available and perhaps return to upgrade the blocks and see what they can do.
Again, this is only a temporary solution because it doesn't address some of the other issues you mentioned, but since I can't dedicate too much time to this right now, I thought I should at least make this change. I am very grateful for your feedback and once again sincerely apologize in replying so late. :')
Stay safe out there! I hope your keyboard is safe as well.