Thanks for all the feedback! Balancing is going to be a big focus going forward, since we want the escalating power feeling of an incremental, but don't want things to get too trivialised later on.
And I'm glad you like the "no explanation" approach! We decided early on that we want the clowns being in the hole to just be a normal state of affairs, with no additional explanation needed, so it's nice to see this feels good to others as well!