After a frustrating first few attempts I finally figured out how to play, and damn it's good. It's got a fair bit of depth for a PICO-8 game---you have to think about how you build your network and economy, because your actions are irreversible and have serious implications for the future. Cool, calm music and detached presentation accentuate the cold, long-term planning you need. The only change I'd make is to maybe remove “tough” difficulty to free up tokens for other features, since >90% of “tough” runs are basically unplayable. I guess you could read it as poetically showing that space colonisation is brutally hard? However, up to “challenging” difficulty, this is one of the best PICO-8 games I've played.
My progress: 5 stars on “challenging” with no unhappy planets and 4 stars on “tough” with no unhappy planets