The divide between "used to this kind of game" and "newbie" is so incredibly vast. I needed probably another 40 gradations of difficulty before I got to the third checkpoint.
The issue is not just "game hard", it's "game unapproachable". The only people who will enjoy it are those who have already gotten over the massive difficulty cliff elsewhere, everyone else will be left stranded. That is the game's responsibility in my opinion; to initiate the player into the skills and understanding needed to enjoy the game. You could argue that the intended audience is only hardcore puzzle lovers, sure, but I would argue that if you have to go somewhere else to train to be able to play and enjoy a game, there's something wrong. The game should be for enjoyment, not an examination of prior learned skills.
Just adding more gradations of difficulty would be enough to fix the issue, but ideally there would be some kind of choice of difficulty so that if you want a really hard challenge you can skip past the more gradual difficulty curve set for the uninitiated.
The mechanic is very smooth though, every move feels satisfying. You can tell work and thought went into this.
The divide between "used to this kind of game" and "newbie" is so incredibly vast. I needed probably another 40 gradations of difficulty before I got to the third checkpoint.
The issue is not just "game hard", it's "game unapproachable". The only people who will enjoy it are those who have already gotten over the massive difficulty cliff elsewhere, everyone else will be left stranded. That is the game's responsibility in my opinion; to initiate the player into the skills and understanding needed to enjoy the game. You could argue that the intended audience is only hardcore puzzle lovers, sure, but I would argue that if you have to go somewhere else to train to be able to play and enjoy a game, there's something wrong. The game should be for enjoyment, not an examination of prior learned skills.
Just adding more gradations of difficulty would be enough to fix the issue, but ideally there would be some kind of choice of difficulty so that if you want a really hard challenge you can skip past the more gradual difficulty curve set for the uninitiated.
The mechanic is very smooth though, every move feels satisfying. You can tell work and thought went into this.