The core pillars of Idle Breakout are bouncing balls, buyer's remorse, player confusion, and bait.
There's a good game hiding underneath all of that? But in order to access it, you have to trust the game by buying the things that you assumed were bad after the game has already tricked into buying the things that you assumed were good.
I would go so far as to say that the core mechanics of the game are coping with disappointment and online fact-checking, two things that we could all use a little more of, these days.