Ask for the shape of the challenge.

A storyteller AI aims raids at whatever you are worst at, and mood is a second economy that collapses faster than the defensive one.

Thermodynamics as a colony sim. The base that runs beautifully for forty cycles fails on the sixtieth because the heat had nowhere to go.

The town is gone, so there is no bank of spare heroes to absorb a bad decision — a run is four people and every relationship between them is a mechanic.

Armour has to be stripped before any control lands, surfaces do more damage than swords, and the game explains neither. Act two is where under-levelled parties stop entirely.

Hundreds of hours of interlocking systems with a mid-game crisis on a timer. Most losses happen fifty in-game years before anybody notices them.

Division templates, supply and production efficiency are the game, and none of them are on screen when you start. The front line is only ever a symptom.

It barely tests your hands at all; it tests whether you can walk away from a dungeon you have already paid for.

The failure state is a confused kind of boredom — you will rule for two centuries before you work out what you were supposed to be doing.

The rules are the difficulty. A fight lost on turn one was lost in the inventory screen, and the game is content to let you walk into an encounter five levels early without a word. Honour mode makes one wipe final; Explorer makes almost nothing final.

A city builder where the scarce resource is time and every law you sign is unrepealable. The storm arrives on schedule whether or not the city is ready.