It's been one week since the release of Clockwork Cleanup. I'm so glad that everyone is enjoying it! I love seeing the screenshots of your grids. There's a lot of builds I would have never thought of :) Thank you to everyone who's played.
Short term updates
There are a few bugs I've seen in gameplay videos (most notably the tiny reward sprites) that I'll work on fixing. Luckily, these are cosmetic bugs and I haven't heard about crashes from anyone after the 1.0.3 hotfix. Please let me know in the Discussions if you run into a bug.
I will also work on adding a bit more clarity to the break time options. A lot of options get thrown at you all at the same time on your first run and it can be confusing.
Balance
Defensive strategies with lots of daze and shields are quite strong at the moment. I wanted to have more defensive options beyond just stacking Crystal Barriers, but when all the options are used in tandem it's pretty easy to become invincible. It's certainly fun to become a juggernaut, but it shouldn't be the only strategy. This is something I would like to work on.
The Future
With respect to future content...I'm not sure. I honestly didn't expect this much interest. I will likely be able to add a set of difficulty levels similar to Slay the Spire's Ascension levels and I have some ideas on how that can work. This, of course, must go hand-in-hand with balance as the game must still be winnable with a variety of strategies at the highest difficulty.
I would love to have twice as many spell tiles in the game, but that is a huge endeavor. I want to make sure to maintain a balance of the number of tiles of each element as well as the size of the tiles. I also don't want any tiles to be redundant. Every tile should have some unique combination of charge time, damage, targeting, buff/debuff, or special feature. This likely means that adding new game tiles will require introducing new gameplay mechanics which must harmonize well with everything that already exists.
This extends to new characters as well. If I add more characters, I would want them to feel significantly different. This could require new tiles specific to that character or character-specific mechanics.
I will give this some thought, but I can't make any promises at this point.
Keep those factories clean!