"...and the randomness made each interaction feel fresh."
ooh, you said just the right thing for me to reply to this message! I actually intentionally made the Simon not completely random! There's actually only a total of four patterns, one for each starting color. The idea is that it feels random at first, but if you were to really want to optimize play (high score chasing or if I expanded the game to be longer), you'd pick up that it's deterministic after the initial color. That way you can feel an improvement in your own proficiency as you get better at the game. I used a similar design idea for the calculator clocks which only have a few operations they can display (well and it was also easier to implement that way on the backend haha).
The game definitely took some inspiration from the Cook, Serve, Delicious! series and from playing Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes without the manual which both have that similar aha moment of figuring out the patterns and becoming more efficient.