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And Dark Souls is like this the whole game, giving you hints of information, letting you summon for boss fights, that kind of stuff. Finally, you’re given an opportunity to start the true Asylum Demon fight by taking off a massive chunk of its health, emboldening you and encouraging you to keep at what is indeed a hard game. Once you’ve proven some basic traversal and combat understanding, you’ll make it far enough into the level to gain the Estus Flask, ensuring that this new mechanic doesn’t have to be understood at the same time as the controls. The game lets you try out movement, then combat, and then sets up a threat you’re clearly not supposed to kill quite yet in the Asylum Demon. Dark Souls is my favourite example, because stuff like the tutorial level has clearly been carefully considered. I want to start by cutting a fine line between a game not caring about you and a game simply being hard: there are plenty of hard games out there that actually care a great deal about the player’s experience. In light of games having developed so much, I think there are some experiences we can only get by looking a bit into what it’s like when we throw it all away and stop caring about the player. Is this just bad design? Or is there more we can get from returning to a time where games just did not care about you? I think there is indeed value in at least exploring some of that design nowadays. They have a vision, and by god that vision involves some stuff a player is just going to have to deal with or move on from. These games are what I’d call uncaring games, games that for whatever reason just do not give one single care about your experience as a player. There’s a lack of information, or completely unfair level design, or just some complete nonsense that nobody would add in intending to enhance a player’s experience. But some games do, intentionally or not, throw away those player aids. We usually envision games being a brick wall as something of the past, forgotten design that has stayed down for a good reason. These have developed for real reasons, a product of decades of learning and testing out various ways to make a game experience better, smoother, and more enjoyable. What does it mean when a game well and truly does not care about your experience as a player? Something that I think many people don’t realize is that most games are deeply biased in the player’s favor, creating learning opportunities and small affordances that let you take on their challenges.