• Light/Dark
  • Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
  • We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.

Games that make you feel inept or How Stephen's Sausage Roll drove me to tears.

Another

Another

Banned
Oct 23, 2019
1,684
Portugal
I recently bough Stephen's Sausage Roll during the november Steam sale and finally started playing through it last week.This game is a very serious contender for the best puzzle game ever made and I had a blast getting through the first two worlds! I was sitting at ~4 hours by the time I finished the second world (tower level) last thursday. I'm currently sitting at 16 hours and have only managed to clear two levels since starting the third world. I've been banging my head against the same three levels for about 11 hours with absolutely no clue about how to solve them. I got so frustrated playing it last night after about 4 consecutive hours of trying to get through one specific level that I actually broke down in tears. I've been playing videogames since the late 80s and have never encountered any other game that has made me feel this ineffective!

So here's a thread about games that make you feel small and inept! Which are the games that taunt and haunt you, Era?
 
Last edited:
Aaron D.

Aaron D.

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,337
Loves me some SSR. It was my GOTY 2016.

As you've probably realized, new areas introduce new puzzle mechanics. Might want to noodle through what the hook for the new area is.

I typically advise against it, but if you've hit a wall and are in danger of dropping the game altogether, just look up the solution to the next puzzle. It might reveal something you never even thought of and will restart your progress.

EDIT:

As for the thread premise. I'd say Dwarf Fortress.

I love "easier" colony management games like RimWorld, but DF is just a whole different level of depth. My puny brain just can't grasp it (yet).


That and I've always wanted to get into Space Station 13.
 
Last edited:
Firima

Firima

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,486
Baba is You and the incomparable Stephen's Sausage Roll are critical hits to my sense of self-worth but I adore them. It takes a truly great puzzle game to make you nope out the moment you see what a level is asking of you...and you STILL come crawling back to it later.
 
Nocturnowl

Nocturnowl

Member
Oct 25, 2017
26,144
Baba is You
Owl is Dumb

I just start getting so impatient and feel shame every time I buckle and just look at a solution because not knowing for longer than 30 minutes breaks me, I can't just wait things out for that eureka moment when I'm lying in bed hours later, I need to see how the magicians trick works.
 
chrominance

chrominance

Sky Van Gogh
Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,668
Stephen's Sausage Roll and Baba Is You both have points where I get to the next puzzle, see the new mechanic they've introduced, cower in fear of ever being able to master it, and then abandon the game, probably for good. With SSR it was when I ran into my first tower level. With Baba Is You it was when it introduced a few new commands that involved other things moving automatically, and realizing I now had to time action cycles properly.

Zachtronics games don't have quite the same clearly delineated cliff, but I get a similar feeling from their games as well. Eventually I reach a point that feels like it stretches my ability to mentally juggle everything the game is asking of me, and I take a break.
 
cakely

cakely

Member
Oct 27, 2017
13,149
Chicago
Recently, Risk of Rain 2.

That game just makes me feel like it was designed to be played by someone better at games than me.
 
borntoulouselautrec

borntoulouselautrec

Banned
Jul 17, 2018
480
A lot of the 'shame' can be countered by a really good learning curve, something which Talos Principle managed very well.

Zachronics games as a genre require programming skills, for better or worse.
 
OP
OP
Another

Another

Banned
Oct 23, 2019
1,684
Portugal
Aaron D. said:
As you've probably realized, new areas introduce new puzzle mechanics. Might want to noodle through what the hook for the new area is.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yep, I understand what the new hook is, the great tower level pretty much made sure I had to understand how stacked sausage movement works and the new possibilities it brings to the table... I just can't seem to apply any of that knowledge to come up with any type of creative and inventive solutions reliably until randomly playing around with stuff produces a watershed moment, for some reason. I got through Cold Trail and Cold Pit nice and easily (yeah turns out it was two levels I got through in world 3, not just one) and I actually managed to beat one the levels I was stuck on right after posting this thread (Cold Jag), but Cold Cliff and Cold Frustration still have me completely stumped! There's other levels I can access but I've made it a personal rule not to spread myself out over more than 3 levels at a time.

I'd really rather not look up solutions until I'm at the point of quitting.
 
xendless

xendless

Teyvat Traveler
Member
Jan 23, 2019
10,710
Bullet-hell games
timthumb.php
 
sph3re

sph3re

One Winged Slayer
Avenger
Oct 28, 2017
8,412
Baba Is You. Got to the lake world and stopped because I got so stumped.

...Then I let my girlfriend play and she got further in 10 minutes than I did in hours.
 
Okabe

Okabe

Is Sometimes A Good Bean
Member
Aug 24, 2018
19,954
if it helps back in the day i was able to fly right through Ty: The tasmanian tiger.

today i decided hey why not try the remasters....and I can't find 5 more opals/ complete the challenges for them IM SO CONFUSED THE LAYOUT HOW DID I DO THIS BEFORE AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
 
1upsuper

1upsuper

Member
Jan 30, 2018
5,489
Stephen's Sausage Roll is a formidable game. I would be embarrassed to have anyone watch me play this game since I spend way too long fumbling around.

On the other hand, Baba is You clicked with me and I sailed through a good chunk of the game.
 
SapientWolf

SapientWolf

Member
Nov 6, 2017
6,565
Toki Tori's playful, cartoonish aesthetics and deceptively simple level designs are really good at making you feel inadequate when you're completely stumped on one of its fiendish puzzles.
 

Syril

Member
Oct 26, 2017
5,895
I don't play fighting games online anymore for the benefit of my mental health.
 
Ionic

Ionic

Member
Oct 31, 2017
2,735
Going out of the way to say you completed everything through the Tower within 4 hours is a straight up humble brag. Or at least the ineptitude you felt in world 3 definitely hit earlier for me! But yes, it's absolutely one of the greatest puzzle games. It's an excellent example of pushing a few game mechanics as far as they are able to go. Puzzle games seem really good at this these days.
 
Feep

Feep

Lead Designer, Iridium Studios
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
4,607
I full-cleared both SSR and Baba is You without any help, and they are (alongside a similar accomplishment with Recursed) the hardest things I have ever done in gaming.
 

Deleted member 4090

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
9,053
Nocturnowl said:
Baba is You
Owl is Dumb

I just start getting so impatient and feel shame every time I buckle and just look at a solution because not knowing for longer than 30 minutes breaks me, I can't just wait things out for that eureka moment when I'm lying in bed hours later, I need to see how the magicians trick works.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Baba is a weird game because every time you look up an answer, it will increase the odds of you having to look up a future puzzle because you aren't internalizing the lessons that puzzle was meant to teach you. It builds on itself much more than most puzzle games do.
 
djplaeskool

djplaeskool

Member
Oct 26, 2017
19,792
SSR shares that same duality with Baba Is You where it can make you feel like the smartest person in the world and the dumbest person in the world mere minutes apart.

You just have to learn to hold some real mean Ls with these kinds of puzzlers, and just walk away after a while.
 
Dangerblade

Dangerblade

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,659
I played it on my phone a bit, prefer the keyboard interface so I play it on laptop mainly but the touch controls worked well enough :)
 
OnanieBomb

OnanieBomb

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,497
I swear there's something "wrong" with every other level in Baba is You...until I figure it out.

Sometimes I think "if I had to complete this game to save my life, could I?"

And the answer is probably not.
 
eraFROMAN

eraFROMAN

One Winged Slayer
Member
Mar 12, 2019
2,894
Tekken 7, good lord. I'm likely one of the worst Tekken players on the planet. This is even after getting trained up in Virtua Fighter by some of the literal best in the world. Tekken just does not come naturally to me in any way, it's too bad I don't really like SFV and no one plays VF anymore.
 
dodmaster

dodmaster

Member
Apr 27, 2019
2,548
Demon's Tilt. There's an achievement for getting 1 billion, like that's ... remotely achievable.

I barely scratch 40 million.
 
Bony Manifesto

Bony Manifesto

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,589
I've been playing some Final Fantasy XIV recently, and while the solo play is nice relaxing 'podcast-game' stuff, the PvE dungeons that you run into as part of the main story are some of the most traumatic gaming experiences I've ever had. It's a combination of the game not preparing you enough for the change in play style, the party structure of there being only one tank and one healer (so if you play those roles you have a lot of responsibility and nobody to pick up your slack), and pretty much the only people still playing early-game content are veterans looking to speed-run it to grind. It's one thing to get shouted at by people when you know you're performing your role well, but it's quite another when you know full well that you're the weak link and responsible for a team wipe on some of the easiest content in the game.
 
GoutPatrol

GoutPatrol

Member
Oct 30, 2017
1,701
I basically just gave up on The Witness and just watched videos on how to get through several sections.

Also I guess outside of video games, I feel terribly inadequate playing Scrabble. I can just never sit and see the words like my family could.
 
Tuftecake

Tuftecake

Member
Mar 26, 2018
19
z8B26ih.png

Never fails, every single game at least ONCE gives that feeling. Course they all also give that lovely feeling of being a GENIUS when you figure some things out so, hat tip as well as fist shake to mister Layton.
 
AncientReptileBrain

AncientReptileBrain

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,463
I'm constantly chasing that SSR high. Baba is You was a treasure too.

edit: snakebird is well good too — it's a little more fiddly in the tower of Hanoi sense every now and then, but definitely worth your time and money if you enjoyed the above two. The recently released "Snakebird Primer" is like a big tutorial for the original game if you found the original oppressively hard.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.