The biggest problem is how it presents itself - as a strongly narrated game making you difficult, morally ambigious choices. In reality, the games is basically a few very static scenarios, narrated by rather poorly written dialogue (why is everyone saying "SH!T" all the time in the most inappropriate moments?), and the so called "choices" are not choices at all. Instead, you face an optimization task, when you have a few resources (morale, food, health, pain, etc...) to manage, with very crude to missing feedback concerning the outcome of your actions. Your task is to find an optimal sequence of steps AND be very lucky with random numbers. If you are not, you fail, hand have to do a whole tedious section again.

Imagine a game where you would have to memorize a sequence of numbers. If you fail to reproduce it, you have to start again. If you succeed, you have roll three six sided dice - if you fail to roll three sixes, you fail, and have to do it again, together with the memorization part.

"But this is a HARD game, and you don't get it." But I do get it, the game is not hard, it's only extremely unfair, like casino slot machines, or roulette. The odds are stacked against you, and that's why you keep losing. It's not a matter of skill, it's a matter of ridiculously blind tenacity. You just have to keep on trying until after very long time, you will be lucky. Is it worth the effort? My answer is a resolute NO, there are far better games out there that do not try so hard to abuse you.

The creators of the game are obviously very aware of the nature of the game, since they state in the beginning: "You will hate us a lot." Well players mostly hate the designers for badly designed games. If the frustration far outweighs the satisfaction it brings, the game has a serious problem. If you, as a designer, know about it, and don't do anything about it, then you have a problem. But the game designers just send a clear message to the player: "We are the gods that are watching you fail and fail again. And it's your fault."

Instant deaths are frowned in game design, because they are unfair to the player. Yet this game prides itself in using it ad nauseam. However, it's probably just a method to cover up how very little content the game actually features. If you want a 5 hours of gameplay, and want the player to spend 10 minutes in each room, you have to design 30 locations for that purpose. However, if you make a game like this that makes you spend an hour or more on one room, voila, you need only 5 rooms, that's six times less work. If you played the game, just ask yourself: "If I made each level on my first try, how would I perceive the overall length of the game?"

Your criticisms are valid, but I strongly disagree with your conclusions. The game is exactly what it was advertised to be. It is exactly what the demo suggested it would be. The game comes with an "Easy" difficulty mode that makes the game play more intuitively with looser margins for error (on normal difficulty you can mess up five turns before you even realise you have painted yourself into a corner). I have not beaten the first scenario yet but I thought it gave me plenty of visual and text based feedback. The demo was even more transparent showing the actual numbers under the hood.

I think for a game that advertises itself as presenting six single screen/room pretentious minimalist game design scenarios, you really can't fault it for being exactly that.

Still, I can not believe Devolver did not force the designers to let someone who is fluent in English revise the script before publishing the game. The English translation is the worst I have seen outside of international Japanese game releases. Unforgivable.

They could have marketed it more accurately, thats for sure. To me this isnt really an adventure game.. it just has the style of one. Its like if you called "to the moon" an rpg, just because it has an rpg-ish appearance. But i wouldnt go so far to say the creators are being dishonest about it.. the trailer implies its a much more interesting game that i would care about, but it doesnt make any untrue claims. But yeah, the design of this game is both bad and extremely annoying because criticism of the game is met with "its just so challenging, you arent good enough!!!" When the reality is its packed full of mediocre design.

"But this is a HARD game, and you don't get it." But I do get it, the game is not hard, it's only extremely unfair, like casino slot machines, or roulette. The odds are stacked against you, and that's why you keep losing. It's not a matter of skill, it's a matter of ridiculously blind tenacity. You just have to keep on trying until after very long time, you will be lucky. Is it worth the effort? My answer is a resolute NO, there are far better games out there that do not try so hard to abuse you.

I totaly agree to this. And this drives me really mad. Even in the first level when a hostage is visibly low on moral I try to calm it down and instead of being less scared the immediately run for the doors. What is the calming down even there for then?