Thank you, these are some valuable and useful insights (both, regarding the ux issue in the how to play section and Newgrounds). Also, good takes on the gameplay improvements.
I still don’t think that hard-capping the time is a good idea, since I want to reward the player’s skill to find better combos, and therefore they should be allowed to build up a time bank in order to survive longer. However, I think you proposed a good solution by suggesting to decrease the time bonus after each hand instead of making the time run faster. (Maybe a mixture of both - Hard-capping the time, but not decreasing the time bonus, if the time cap would have been exceeded for a certain amount of time (depending on how much it has been exceeded) would be the best way from a technical point of view. However, I don’t know if implementing such obscure mechanics is the right way, since a game that is competitive in this way should be transparent in how it works. On the other hand, explaining this in detail is what the “pro tips” page of the how to play section is for … I’ll think about it.)
Lowering the bar for some achievements is something, I also thought about. Will do. Along with integrating the leaderboard, which I wanted to do anyway, but this has to wait until March.
I like the idea of junk tiles very much. But those would either never disappear or have another mechanic that removes them from the board, so I though about combining your ideas of junk tiles and more colors. For example, there could spawn a red sheep every 300 points or something (thinking 300-500, need to play-test that). That way, there would be sheep that will definitely stay on the board longer than others, but they can disappear eventually.
About the next-display: I don’t think it’s necessary either. Definitely more useful in chicken mode, but in general, you want to keep the board as clean as possible, so if you play well, especially in the earlier phase where you have much time, you’ll start into the next hand with 0-3 sheep left on the board. In later stages, you’ll have less time to think ahead an make quick decisions, so you won’t be able to additionally process the next-display. However, this got requested in the jam comments, so I implemented it. I don’t think it’s distracting because the display is rather small.