Return to Monkey Island+

I am looking forward to playing this game, and if you missed it, I would recommend it, for people who like old Lukas Arts quests: Full Throttle and others. I have great memories of completing the remastered version of Monkey Island 2 on my original iPad. When I wanted to start playing and deep dive into the world of pirates and silly adventures I was presented with the choice.

There’s one aspect of modern gaming which doesn’t sit right with me—it’s difficult choices. I mean I don’t like to choose difficulty in general, because I always self-doubt my choice. It’s my personality I guess. And video games is an escape. A world where I can’t make the wrong choice. Unless making wrong choices is part of the game.¹

This screen is terrible because there’s not even a medium option. I see this design as a delegation of UX to the player. Now in a way, you designed two games, and you want me to be responsible for making a choice which one I want. The problem is, and a truth, at least for me. I do not know. Honestly, I do not know what’s best for me here. I just want to play the game, enjoy a story, and be challenged with puzzles. If you are a game designer, I want you to take more responsibility and reduce these choices for your customers, or at least hide, or bury them in the settings— default experience matters. Your choices matter. If the game feels too hard or not too challenging enough at least I can blame you, and not blame myself for picking a wrong option. From my experience, in most of the cases, no matter what difficulty I pick, I end up restarting the game. Or constantly switching between options during gameplay, which is even worse. It takes me out of flow, now I am thinking as a game designer instead of enjoying the process.