actually it would change you into pulseman

@chandler I hope the review didn't come across like I hated the game for how I carelessly forced my way through, but I can see why it may seem that way. Even in my little sample of the game, I actually had eighteen pages of notes, with screenshots and links to other correlated information, the whole shebang. I streamed it to a group of buds who had beaten the game before, and they were fairly satisfied with my progress (though there were some truly idiotic moments too, naturally). I know that doesn't mean much to anyone else, but I really did give my best here, and didn't intentionally smash puzzle boxes to get the rewards inside. More on that in a bit.

But yes, I actually would say it's the fault of a puzzle if you're able to easily brute force it. In a puzzle game, the dominant strategy and incentivized player behavior should be thinking. That sounds silly and obvious, but consider a tired example like Portal. That game is extremely difficult to just brute force in the later stages because your problem space is so wide, with an entire map full of white portal-able surfaces, but you never even feel the impulse to just hit random buttons, because your agency is so well defined. You know that you can either spend 3 hours shooting around and jumping, or you can stop for a moment, take in your surroundings, and solve it in 10 minutes.

In La Mulana, at least in the early game, your dominant strategy isn't to think in this way, because your problem space is deliberately obscure. The game trains you with intangible walls, invisible interactions, and puzzles you simply have no way of interacting with for many hours. You're trained to do a soft brute force of every new screen, whipping stuff and walking into walls just to be sure. Occasionally, as is in the case of Futo, it completely obviates the real puzzle. That's why I specified that I didn't intentionally try to disrespect the puzzles, but it's something that just sorta happened on a regular basis. I didn't want to ruin the puzzle, but the game told me to.

However, all that is predicated on one important phrase: "in a puzzle game". I can't fault La Mulana for not being a good puzzle game, because it doesn't actually try to be one, deliberately eschewing those standard design principles in favor of building a specific experience. That's why I don't even have a problem with this game or think it's poorly designed overall; the intention is to craft something for players to feel triumphant for persevering through. Again, "It has to frustrate you, because if it didn’t, there wouldn’t be a game here at all: the central conflict of the player against self wouldn’t exist. La Mulana isn’t bad because of it; it has to be this way".