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I'm loving this so far! Here are my quick recommendations:

1. Like others said, losing progress at the next stage sucks. It would help if your money carried over, and was not tied to the each stage.

2. We need replay value for the old stages. Either some kind of prestige, achievements, or bonus to money for collecting X,XXX balls on previous stages.

A great game! I know it's from a game jam, but I'll review it apart from the game jam. I love the gameplay; the 'slippery ice' feel of turning the boat is great and I wished that unique feeling was kept for the rest of the game. The upgrades had highly noticeable effects and game progression was good. 

I love the weight mechanic of slowing down the boat. Perhaps it should have more of an impact?

Two critiques:

1. There should be some help text to find out what the upgrades do. And other info, I didn't know what the cursed coins did for a long while.

2. The graphics could be better. It's hard to see the boat, tentacles, and other graphics against that background. Even some white outlines could help. It also looks like the game area doesn't match the resolution since the water is floating.

I'd love to replay this with those improvements, and I have some other ideas if you continue to develop this game. It would be nice if we could see the items fall through the water. 

I also thought we would see cthulhu at some point, maybe a boss fight? Dunno how that would work. Perhaps for an endgame, you can have the water slowly rise up and the mouse can reach a ladder to escape the well.

Love the game!

Great game! I found the upgrades to be very well balanced, where no upgrade path is definitively the best one. The difficulty was just right. The scaling of upgrades felt powerful enough. The only thing missing is an endless mode. I want to collect all the powerups!

I'm so glad I saved this game! Coming back to this with the new updates made this much better than I remember. Excellent work!

Game keep crashes after cake wall is broken!

Playing this again, good development progress so far. Really excited for the permanent upgrades between runs. Let me know if you'd like any comments or testing on specific areas of the game.

I think another thing to improve is the balance between the end game and upgrading ascension dice. By the time you're able to farm the Angel for feathers needed for upgrades, there really isn't any point to playing anymore since you "beat" the game.

I would either: make feathers last through ascensions so you can farm earlier bosses, cap the feather cost for ascension die upgrades, or add more content past Angel.

Very nice game! I love the incremental aspect. My sugestion would be some help text for ascension upgrade buttons. I am still unsure of what each upgrade does.

Great! I am looking forward to more from you!

Even with so many enemies, I grew too powerful.  I was able to just sit in one spot and idle the game. Eventually, I tried to end it all. Trying to die was a harder challenge at that point than surviving. I finished on Phase 47 with a score of 17,189.

Decent survival game, but ultimately too laggy and repetitive. The game gets really slow with too many objects on screen. I wonder if having the cores and bullets vanish after a time would minimize lag. I currently have 1,800+ cores just sitting there.

The game would also benefit from new boss/elite enemies. Larger enemies with tons more health, or speed, or possibly with weapons themselves.

Has potential. Needs more enemy types at the very least.

5:14
Can't believe I'm saying this, but you might want to nerf the vfx/rainbow. Just a bit OP :)

5:33
VFX pack is soooo good! I had 4-5 rainbow cards and I think got up to 200+ damage/bullet.

6:37 
Best combo I can find for packs is: Friend, Gun, and Burst. I still have more upgrades and packs to get, so sub-6:00 is the goal.

Starting to speedrun now. 6:52 is my best (once boss is defeated and final dialogue begins). It would help to pause timer during dialogue.

This is good! But a bit short with the amount of upgrades you can get.

If you're still updating this game - I suggest 2 QOL updates. A more visible targeting cursor because I keep losing sight of my cursor. And a slight pause after getting a new card and after the boss dialogue ends.

Bug: you can click an already purchased diamond upgrade and lose diamonds.

Quick start-up guide:

1. Click on a square and buy a tower. You can drag any tower to a new square for free.

2. Buy more towers and increase their damage/range until you can beat Wave 10.

3. Stop buying upgrades, run in background and farm the diamonds at Wave 10.

Love this! Fantastic concept and execution for the game jam - 5 stars all around.

If you continue this  after the jam, consider adding health, and boss attacks. Then you can add a couple extra dice: nature for healing, and lightning to stun bosses.

Lovely animation, fantastic concept and execution! 5 stars from me

Man, I love good drill games. This was a great jam entry!

Needs just a bit more to take it the next level. Some comments:

- faster animation of dice, or have them all roll at once

- more options for treasure, some worth more that show up the deeper you dig

- an option to end the run early

I would also like to agree with ArjenK's review. Was great, but the lategame was less enjoyable.

If you continue this after the jam, I would love to see some more late game features. Maybe an upgrade for a breakable left wall? Or some kind of rare golden dice for instant cash?

Stock up on good shield dice for Queen Bee. Use honey die to cover the Crown marked slots in honey, and it gives a x2 bonus to a die placed there.

Use a honey die to cover that slot in honey, and it gives a x2 bonus to a die used in the honey-covered Crown marked slot.

This is a great game! Just enough RNG to sometimes be frustrating, and sometimes too easy.

If you are still working on this, a couple QOL improvements:

- a pause button hotkey (space)

- a fast-forward button. Some of the early levels can be slow, especially with Wizard's Cyclone and Blizzard spells.

Phenomenal! This is great for a game jam - would love to see a larger version. This mechanic is so unique!

32:20 is the time to beat. I think the first section is where you need to find the optimal setup for zealots. Takes me about 20 minutes to reach 10M followers and unlock Propaganda. The rest of the game goes much quicker.

Still a bit of optimization possible. Will try for sub 30:00 later