Ask for the shape of the challenge.

Nothing fails quickly. A road laid in the first hour becomes unfixable in the twentieth, and that delay is the only real difficulty in it.

A card game that keeps changing what kind of game it is. The difficulty is noticing which rules you are allowed to break, and when.

Weakness targeting is the whole of combat, and the calendar is the real difficulty: a day spent wrong in November cannot be spent again.

Depth and darkness rather than combat. It is careful never to tell you where to go, which is either the appeal or the wall depending on the player.

Document checking against a clock, where the rules change every morning and a mistake comes out of the family’s rent.

The difficulty is logistics — weight, terrain and route planning — with combat as an interruption you are usually allowed to walk around.

Tool-based puzzles that stay scrupulously fair, while the optional stars quietly assume you will break the rules the tutorial spent an hour teaching.

Death drops your gear where you died, and where you died is usually the swamp. The stamina economy keeps fights short and losing them expensive.

It barely tests your hands at all and is one of the most punishing games here anyway: saving takes ten seconds at a fixed terminal and can be interrupted, so every stretch of progress is a bet you are choosing to hold.

Hazard 5 with four dwarves is a coordination problem. Solo with Bosco is a slower, different game that the hazard tiers do not really account for.