I think the experience works very well for hardcore gamers, since the levels are quite short and the difficulty in overcoming them maps to the difficulty of the girl character’s mourning. I actually really enjoyed it. But for mainstream gamers it must feel difficult having to restart each level from the beginning. I wonder if the difficulty had something to do with (not) obtaining enough marketing budget.

Hmm… I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me the design issues were all related to the unforgiving nature of the game. The lack of checkpoints. The pace at certain times. The variety of items you were expected to juggle. The *core* of the experience felt solid to me — it only required adjustment and polish. Put another way: the first couple minutes of the demo, when the game is distilled to its essence, feels really good… I can definitely imagine ways that the rest of Lucidity could have followed through better.

RE: reviews — I haven’t read them all, but I did read a couple, and they seemed totally focused on difficulty. That said, it does seem weird for the score to be as low as it is. I was always under the impression that reviewers tend to be more tolerant of unforgiving games than the average player. Perhaps that does imply other underlying issues.