Hey!
Thanks a lot for playing and giving me a review on the game!
I could see why the popularity thing wasn't that understandable... The main point of popularity was somewhat similar to the second idea you had :
The idea of popularity was basically, It is the popularity of the company of your dice... The more the popularity of the dice, the more the customers/people you get to judge... I will probably change the popularity to something reputation in the update I am currently working on...
Also thanks for the tip! been struggling a bit on how to make my pixel art better in-game, so it helps!
TL;DR, the idea of the popularity was basically the more right decisions you make the more popular is your dice hence more people use it, which gives you more to judge
NOTE : Also, the popularity/reputation comes in to play in this update in the form of story LORE :)