Been playing a bit more of this and I kind of want something extra involved in the puzzle, if only to avoid the desire to just randomly try combinations of things. Though I’m not sure what would help.
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I've been thinking about this a lot. It is the main reason I added the clades viewer. So you can see little sillhouettes of things that you haven't yet created that are related to what you've already found. But I couldn't find a way to make it accessible easily from the main game, so currently you have to go to the main menu to see it.
I also am planning a hint feature (which players can disable in the options menu) that suggests a discoverable element name in the ticker tape if the player hasn't made a discovery in X minutes, or every so often if their rate of discovery is lower than Y discoveries per minute.
The clades viewer was originally supposed to be full images or vignettes with the undiscovered elements as parts of the image, but that was too much work for the jam. I also kind of like the oribiting elements, it's pretty funny. But maybe less helpful / interesting to look at / rewarding.