I don’t plan to write a postmortem for this game, but there are a few things I’d like to say, and this thread seems like the best place.
First, the loop at the story’s end is not an oversight or a bug. When you’re endlessly floating in space, that’s what you do: endlessly float in space. Since so many players thought it was an oversight or a bug, though, I doubt I’ll use a technique like that again.
Second, the loop at the end isn’t the end. Of course, people in this thread already know that. Looking into the code is the game’s biggest puzzle, with clues in the text directing the player to do it. Nobody was expected to blindly look into the code, and if anyone did, that means the puzzle didn’t work for them.
I don’t intend to explain the story. It’s something for players to piece together. I have, however, noticed a disheartening tendency for reviewers to assume the fortune machine is a statement, on my part, about mathematics being some kind of cold universal law. To those reviewers, I’d simply like to re-emphasize that it’s a fortune machine. A tool, built by people, installed to serve a certain purpose.