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   Jacek Wesołowski (jzillw@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Thursday, 16-May-2024 16:39:03 JST Jacek Wesołowski

   Systems-oriented games are difficult to design well, because there's a lot of stuff that only works if you and the player have a shared understanding of a given system.

   One example of this is Frostpunk, where all the difficulty is caused by you now knowing the optimal setup at first. When I played it, I restarted the first scenario about a dozen times before I got it right. And when I did, the game got easy. So easy that there wasn't much to do anymore.

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     Jacek Wesołowski (jzillw@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Thursday, 16-May-2024 16:42:31 JST Jacek Wesołowski

     in reply to

     Ixion, which I just finished, gives you more time for learning and tools for applying new knowledge (i.e. removing a building gives you a full refund). So it avoids this particular trap.

     But it falls into another. It has delivery and station layout optimization that work differently from other city builders but it never says anything, and you can only discover it by trial and error. I ended up restarting twice.