I don’t mind hard games. At all. I’ve done all the souls games, big fan of meat boy and hotline miami. I have the skill and the willingness. Overcoming challenging trials feels rewarding. Unfair difficulty can be frustrating, but I can get through it in limited amounts.

What I don’t have as much patience for is punishing games. Hotline miami in particular comes to mind as “this game is actually very difficult, but death is a single click to get back to the action, so 15 attempts to get through a room feel trivial.” Many roguelikes are the opposite, not necessarily terribly difficult, but a mistake can be punished with restarting an entire run. Either your build catches on fire, or you’ve burned an hour or more with no hope from the start. If they’re punishing (start the entire run over), AND difficult (extremely threatening encounters), AND unfair (complete RNG on what’s on the other side of every door, might be a death sentence)? No thanks.

I do appreciate the appeal of “the world is threatening and you’ll need to learn what’s survivable by exploring it” though. Big fan of that.