I don't mind a good grind.
I think the enjoyment of the incremental is the feeling of past experience leading to allowing you to do more intensive activities which once seemed impossible.
I'm sure I remember a creepy-pasta based on SCP-934.. (might have been erased from the collection owing to how 'story-like' it was at the time) This game in the early stages reminds me of that situation. As such, I played this game working from a bunch of narrative expectations. Namely, how I chopped a LOT of wood early on in case the game gives you a trollish 'oopsy -- the evil entities are at the door and you're out of emergency firewood' experience. So I gathered enough logs that automatically piled together to half the height of the lighthouse itself. In the process, the game continued to stutter as the physics of the emergency pile levitated into the air (as it bumped against the trees). I cannot file this under 'bug' because no dev can anticipate every stupid action of the player.
Suffice to say though that I felt the lag affect me even when I was in the Terrarium world. My stupid choice led to an outcome I could not control; with there being no other way of anticipating the repercussions.
A suggestion:
Have some NPC agent available at each furnace who will 'keep the flame' (once the minimum resource pool requirements has been met) so the player doesn't need to feel fearful of a furnace going out unattended. That way if you ARE going to add complications to the story, you can drip-feed clues to them that a furnace worker might end up tricked by bob at a key time. Letting the player know to check the situation.
What we have at the moment is a furnace that says 'ON'. once the limit is met. What happens before we reach that limit? It keeps counting down. The player is incentivized to manage a game world where the danger closes in on them but there is no wood available to feed the flames. The solution to the puzzle in that case is to hand-chop trees as close to the darkness as possible so all wood closest to the lighthouse remains available.
It's hard to know under what circumstance that 'ON' might toggle back to a number again. That persistent fear leads to over-harvesting by a cautious player.
... ok, I hope you understand what I'm getting at.
Despite the 'simple' geometry, I can see a fair amount of attention to detail is part of this development.