Thank you for your feedback. We had multiple different versions of the game; earlier versions had fewer islands, they would shrink much slower, and/or there would be increasing cost of buying drills and/or turrets, which would incentivize players to spend time at each island and disincentivize hopping from one to another without giving each much thought. Most of the other versions were much more difficult and demanding, and during the last day much of our time was spent balancing, creating a tutorial level and making the game easier and more accessible. We also had a scaling system that we had to remove last minute because of a major bug. The final version of the game does not fully flesh out the mechanics or balance them in the best way but it's much easier for players to grasp and complete and it's less frustrating.
Balancing the game and effectively teaching all the mechanics to players was arguably the biggest challenge of its development.