I think this game is great actually. I didn't find the minigames too hard, I reached space on the second try... I think the issue is that the minigame balance puts a little too much emphasis on each one. Like, you can get 80% or more in all of them but if you accidentally lose too fast on the last one, you will run out of fuel around 70-80,000 meters.
I think maybe having multiple "goals" could help alleviate the skill discrepancy issue too, like 100,000 could be the base game. I noticed the game does calculate your final distance at the win screen, so when I passed 120,000 maybe it could be acknowledged somehow or give an achievement, etc.
One thing I will say, the tight/fast loop of the minigames does not fit very well with the slow-paced rocket segment. It felt pretty tedious to just watch the rocket slowly spew pixels for 1-2 minutes, only to lose at 75,000 haha. I think it only felt this way because the minigame loop is so fast. Here is a couple things I thought that could help this:
- Maybe the flight segment could be sped up, like eventually it zooms out and seems to speed up a bit, but maybe it could zoom out much sooner? And giving the "flying fast" impression in the first few thousand meters would be fun/juicy, too
- Maybe there could be in-flight minigames to help maintain trajectory, or to release bits off the rocket and shed them away to increase fuel efficiency from that point forward, etc.? This would help distract the player and also help smooth out the "failing one minigame means certain failure" aspect?
Overall this is really cool, great job on your first game!