I wrote:Your game touched meHello dear sirs,
My name is Alex Kierkegaard and I run videogame theory and criticism site
Insomnia (
http://culture.vg). I decided to write you because your game has touched me so much that I have been watching the trailer for it several times daily since I first came across it a few days ago. I won't go into what I like about it in this message, because I want to save it for my review, but what I will say is that you should seriously consider making your game difficult—and the more difficult the better. I won't say any more, or provide any justifications except this: it is impossible for a game to be epic without being difficult. Walks in the park are not epics no matter how beautiful the parks may be. So give a few easy stages for the the mass of the playerbase to play, and then crank up the difficulty for the rest of the game so that people will be coming back to it for years, like they do with
Ghosts 'n Goblins and countless other classic games. And yes,
Rez is easy and amazing, but I beat it in an evening and never touched it again, while I would have loved to have been playing it for days and weeks if it had been properly designed with a proper difficulty curve and more stages. That's why
Rez is a 4/5 game, instead of 5/5 and Videogame Art, and that's what will happen to your game too if you make it a walk in the park, which, from what you are saying about it, that seems to be the case. But difficulty will not lessen the impact of the emotions you are trying to convey, or the player's engagement with your world: it will enhance them. Life is more engaging than videogames because it's tougher, not because it is a walk in the park. And if you want your game to pull in the player harder than life pulls him—for a while at least—you must present him with a stunning aesthetic lure (which you have already done) and a steep challenge to go with it (which I am sure you are not currently doing). The most beautiful things in life are also the hardest to acquire, and that's how it should be with games too.
"The task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted." -The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard
I will conclude this email with a background reading link:
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/arcade_culture/And I will say that I live in Tenerife and I am ready to fly to Barcelona and help you out at a moment's notice if you need me.
Looking forward to be immersed inside your world,
Alex Kierkegaard
http://culture.vg