The game starts off slow, but once you start going into the Specials tree, it really starts showing its stuff.
The map refresh ability plays well into all that, as you try to optimize your layout and combos. I found the best strategy in the game to be to get a chest gemstorm, and then a bunch of chained splitters to grab all of that. Much easier said than done! The gemstorm is a very clever mechanic that encourages experimentation and there are lots of ways to set up a good one.
The combo I just mentioned is very hard to get and takes many shuffles (which gets nasty later on and will hang for a long time), but ultimately it's not needed for a player to progress. It's great to have that extra room for experimentation if a player really wants to tinker and maximizing their output.
This game was fun and I liked theorycrafting a bit around the Specials tree. Unfortunately it did get to a point where the game just couldn't shuffle any more and had to call it quits. A lot of further potential if you keep leaning into clever special interactions and making players decide what combos they want to create!