The minigames can already get quite time consuming late-game and the infinite upgrades get prohibitively costly eventually, so i guess unlocking new minigames later on might be cool rather than making current ones longer.
I thought of a couple minor qol suggestions for the apple game though they dont solve the income difference:
- Make spacebar alone dash in the last direction you pressed. A lot of the time I try to press arrow and space same time but it registers space first so just faceplant into bullets. Also would let you dash in tighter spaces.
- Not have turrets be able to destroy the bad apples or at least not 1-shot.
I'm not sure about this one, maybe this was intentional to limit how long you can survive. The run- killer is usually not being able to replenish turrets cause existing ones destroy all the bad apples before they fall into dash range.
- Also there's no reward for beating any of the bosses and your income stops completely during boss fights, it feels even more punishing when you get a flyer just as the boss spawns. So maybe either a multiplier for each boss defeated or a lump sum apple bonus when the boss dies might be nice. (Early game I would intentionally leave when first boss spawned because it was such a huge time loss even if I could beat it).
Multiplier for kills in a row without getting hit and powerups sound awesome for sure!
I remember there used to be a few of those flash games where you launch a plane or a penguin or whatever with progressive upgrades. Maybe that might work as a minigame but with the witch on a broom. Though it looks like you already had some ideas, judging by some of the scenery, the axe seems to suggest a game to collect wood, and I see the same signs as on the current minigames next to the red tree and the ladder in the caves, so I'm guessing you don't really need suggestions for that.
Oh by the way, lategame when going for highscores in the digging game I remove the Super Special Potion upgrades as much as possible (still forced to get the first level to unlock multipliers), since most of the time they force you down making you miss multipliers that you could've reached otherwise and it can be hard to just avoid hitting them with bombs. Maybe some highscore hunters might find this tip useful. Similarly you want more red fish not less lategame in the fishing game so can set that upgrade back to lv 1. Don't think there's any trick like that for the apple game currently.
Looking forward to seeing future versions!