Thanks for checking out and writing an extensive comment!
I absolutely agree tutorial/story/progression is missing. I just didn't have time. I had to cut so much planned stuff and I barely managed to finish the "main loop" (buy seeds, plant, extract, sell) in time.
and I think there's a way to communicate that kind of tutorial outside of a wiki page in the description
I didn't quite understand the statement. Did you mean I can write "mission list" on the game page as a "jam hotfix"?
I would like to see the YouTube shorts version of what it looks like to be really good at this game
At this stage it's too early to make videos about being really good at the game, since there are so many "big" components missing (upgrades, (on-map)shops, research, multiple drones). And even stronger statement: you can't be really good at the game yet, because the drone still misses a key component: camera. The idea is that drones should be able to see some tiles around them, and you could write map-agnostic algorithm, which would explore map and choose locations on its own (instead of using predefined ones).