Sadistic Game Design, Lame Attitude – The Ensign Review

Enjoying A Dark Room, I got The Ensign. This game is a perfect example of rigged, mean-spirited game design. After you get to a certain point, an over-powered unit always kills your character and the developer starts giving you weird taunting messages. Maybe it's intended as encouragement to keep playing, but it's just negative bully stuff. If you keep playing, you're given extra items and a larger initial map, and it makes you feel pretty lame. Especially when the same over-powered unit is there to kill you again. If you keep playing (dying) and deal with the developer's ego messages, it's a pretty easy game to beat. There's a spaceship ending with the same crap. But the attitude issue remains, and the game suffers from sadistic design ideas. I've uninstalled and reinstalled the game multiple times in an attempt to defeat the over-powered unit -- no avail. Too much time and energy for a lame dev's attitude.
Review by Harborman Jack on The Ensign.