This game is excellent.

I recently described the game to my spouse as "Playing 4 sudoku puzzles at the same time where you can't reuse the same number across any of the puzzles. Also there's like 130 numbers to choose from."

You really don't need to know how the whole system works to start enjoying the game, it is an incredible puzzle game with many elements of unfolding games such as Paperclip and Candybox.

It does cost ~30 dollars to start playing for real though, all of which going into familiars. You can get each one for just over 2 bucks when they are on sale. Playing this game without the autoclicking familiars is how to set yourself up for burnout with this game. The number of familiars you can get through just playing the game is nowhere close to enough for setting up automated parties.

But honestly, that price is not really that high for such a high quality puzzle game.