The atomsphere and the idea is unique, that local multiplayer thingy is also pretty cool. The only thing I think could be better is that the flow of the game could acclerate a bit to build some tension.
The pace does actually increase, to 1.5x base speed at 33% energy and 2x base speed at 66%, it's just a very imperceptible increase since the base is already not that fast lol. So the infrastructure is there, I just need to tweak the variables.