Goals -- too daunting? Pile up too quickly and never solved, should have the feeling of being manageable and slowly solvable.
Settlers of Catan style trading mechanic? Trade 3 red or 3 blue etc for 1 of a color.
Puzzle mechanics -- too hard/unrewarding and too short? Maybe the puzzle should be closer to a crossword or sudoku in terms of difficulty to inspire casual players to at least get interested.
Discard memory (hand)? One way to get rid of stone glut would be to force players to discared some/most of their memory (hand) each turn. This would also be nice because it would give identity a second meaning/conflicting purpose -- i.e. as storage of certain qualities that you want to eventually be your goal. Additionally maybe goals should just be on the identity part -- you have all these stones floating around but the idea is you want your identity to look like xyz cause that's what really matters at the end of the day.
Signalling/Outward facing identity trading instead of getting? Maybe you trade each other whatever your outwarding facing identity is, making it more of a signal and also more interesting in terms of making yourself attractive. Also would be interesting if there were more stone types and some might be rarer than others.
Trending? To keep up with goals if trading is zero sum sometimes/most of the time, maybe players get an extra stone each turn. Instead of that stone being random, maybe it's based on trending (which is great in world focused purely on identity) which is to say the least owned stone becomes trending or the most owned stone becomes trending or even it's based on #hampshiregame #stonecolor mentions on twitter or something.
Identity board -- locked? Maybe instead of being able to change in and out freely, you have to discard and replace stones on the identity board. Maybe the identity board should feel like storage and the hand should feel like short-term memory, or interim storage for just that turn. In fact, maybe turns should be about trying desperately to get the stones you need so you can lock them into your identity before your memory disappears and is replaced. Maybe the identity board is larger for this purpose.
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