PURGATORY and Glass Cleaner were actually sort of branch projects from this one, we were already making Barback Blues and just used each one as an excuse to accelerate development by making new minigames in the form of jam games (obviously glass cleaner ended up just like that in the main game, so it's basically like a piece of Barback Blues taken off of it and put out standalone).
the money thing is pretty intentional, i think of the part where it shows the final number before draining it as some sort of hi-score screen, but you can also see it's connected to exactly how Gil would feel. though tbh money was indeed more of a last minute addition, and it was going to be even more of an afterthought, but i made sure you can "compete" for hi-scores so to speak, so there's no random element and if you're faster than other people you can get a higher one by the end of the game (even if everyone does end up at $0 story-wise). my hi-score is $318.38 by the way.
dialogue choices was definitely something i, me personally wanted to do but it ended up not becoming anything since we just wanted to release the game. i actually wanted to integrate purgatory as a choice at the beginning (unlockable post-game choice) where you can choose to kill yourself and end up in the purgatory game, then after it ends the story continues as normal/restarts without the choice.
all in all the tediousness and emptiness of a shitty job is one of the main things about this game, so arguably it worked, but maybe it could've been made more engaging in some way. i don't think we're gonna update this game ever again though (besides from bug fixes or something).
"a weird mash of love and rusty nails that try to give you tetanus every step of the way" is the funniest and most accurate thing i've read about this game, moreso about its development process. reviews like this make it worth it, thank you. might not update this but we're gonna make bigger and better shit that's for sure.