For a free game like this, especially a labor of love, there's an unspoken social contract between developer and player. Ideally, we all are here to respect each other's time -- to acknowledge the month of coding and testing that went into a product that's being shared freely with us; and in return, to brighten the time that players are spending with this game instead of the thousands of other available alternatives.

For players, time spent waiting is time with no payoff. A game which puts all its waiting up front, without using its initial gameplay to establish that the waiting will pay off later on, is a rough ask. We're all strangers here -- all we have is the word of a total stranger that, really, it gets better, when opportunities that don't require that wait are a click away.

Dev, you've been responsive here and I'm trying to respect that. I've been letting the game idle in the background for about six hours now to see what unfolds with the first few unlocks. I lost a bunch of game time to not realizing that the window had to be active, then split it off into its own window to idle in the background (a thing which, again, many other readily available games do not require). I got VERY lucky on my second card draw and picked up an uncommon card, meaning I was gaining 60 XP/sec instead of 10 XP/sec, and I just hit level 14. Wait times have scaled down to about 30 min per card instead of 60, I can now bank up multiple card draws if I leave it on idle for a while, and ... that seems to be about it. I've unlocked two achievements -- and I clicked "Claim" in the achievements tab, which I expected to give me some sort of bonus or some unlock, and... absolutely nothing.

There are still locked tabs in the interface, with no indication of what's required to reach them. There are still buttons in the interface mentioning "Keys", with no indication of when I start earning that currency. I have no way to set expectations -- does it "get better" after I wait 30 minutes to do one more click, or do I repeat that chore for another 24 hours or more before anything substantial changes? The cards I've unlocked have statistics -- do they ever become relevant, or are they just there for flavor, since the only statistic currently impacting gameplay is card rarity affecting XP/sec? I don't know! And unless an expected part of the gameplay loop is to post here and hear from the developer about it, I can't know!

I mentioned the social contract at the top of the post because it might help to step back, take a deep breath, and think about that feedback loop -- you, the developer, want us to reward your time spent, and that's exactly the same thing players are asking you for. This is not a failure of your programming, it's a failure of the game's user experience and the expectations (or lack thereof) it gets players to set. The 60-minute timer for your next card is a good start there -- now apply that to the rest of the game experience. How do you think people would be reacting if they didn't even know how long they had to wait until their first draw? Do you think anyone would leave the game running in an active tab, indefinitely, with no way to know if they would ever get to draw again? Now apply that logic to the rest of the game interface. At minimum, tell us how many cards (or how many levels, or how many achievements, or IDK) opens up the mystery tabs. Have the game give us a concrete promise -- not because you owe us anything, but because both player and developer need to contribute to the positive feedback loop. Your real enemies are other games which don't make the demands yours does.

Frankly, I would also start the game with enough cards unlocked that the next stage of the game is already available. Is there some sort of card game you get to play with your collection? Then let us play with a "starter deck", have that first free card pull at the beginning be an obvious upgrade over the crappy starters everyone gets up front, and let us explore the card game mechanics while the timer ticks. Then there's real incentive to start rolling through the wait cycle.

As is, I'm giving up on this six hours in, because I still haven't reached the "it gets better" point and I haven't even passed a signpost telling me how much longer to go.

I hope you keep updating the game! There certainly seems to be room here for interesting things to be going on later on, and the month you've put in is by no means wasted effort -- what needs to be fixed is the social contract. Good luck!