Woot. Finally the hard badge is mine.
Many thanks to SuperPeaShooter for excellent advice. (needed some tweaking though. like first 2 day upgrades should be accelerate not ramp. at least for me) Following that post though it only took a couple attempts.
Haven't finished it quite yet. But its fun so far, and the slowdown mechanic is neat, feels very drag-y but still fun. And since it has to be said, we have gone from the Companion Cube to the Communist Cube :P