What would you guys consider a harder, or a tougher game?

[Lumin]

I like a challenging game, where it's possible to screw up badly because you weren't paying attention. Even the ones that don't inform you you've lost until 100 turns later don't bother me as long as it's possible to get some kind of ending and the reason you failed at the ideal one makes some kind of logical sense.

But if you're asking 'what's the point if you can undo after a mistake?' then I'd ask what's the point of a putting in a scenario that makes the player want to use undo in the first place? Instant deaths are completely pointless and only designed to annoy.

Dragonflies are...completely harmless insects but whatever, the question is still what is the reason for killing the player instead of just impeding their progress until they figure out what they need to do to proceed? When the entire genre is about exploring above all, maybe don't arbitrarily punish players for doing that.

[ralphmerridew]

Limiting saves is effective in some video games because, even to a skilled player, there's a chance of screwing up a reply. Sometimes you miss a jump or don't dodge in time.

In IF, for a nonrandomized game, that chance doesn't exist. Once the player has solved a puzzle, the chance of getting past that block the next time is essentially certain. Limiting save/restore/undo just makes the game more tedious. (I remember that Attack of the Robot Yeti Zombies tells the player to try to win on the first playthrough without using those, but IIRC, it doesn't enforce that. FailSafe disables those verbs, but the game is short enough that it doesn't matter much.)

In games with randomized combat (Kerkerkruip is the most notable), disabling S/R/U does change the game. But randomized combat is a pretty polarizing thing; in my experience, a badly designed or balanced randomized combat system is one of the surest ways to kill a game.