I started playing Kingdoms of the Dump (ダンプの王国), and I have been mostly enjoying the game mechanics, but really enjoying its cute and whimsical puns.
It does heavily rely on English colloquialisms, which would make it hard to translate into other languages. #indiegames I haven’t finished the game yet, but I have encountered 3 escape sequences that are examples of bad game design.
1. The game teaches some platforming of jumps and climbing, but then thrusts you into escaping from faster pursuers without any good mechanic to avoid them (random citizens fail to block the pursuers for long). There is no point to it, I as a player learn nothing from the experience.
2. A short 3-minute timed escape that I made with 10 seconds to spare. No room for error. Again, as a player I learn nothing from the experience.
3. An EIGHT MINUTE timed escape through a dungeon that is already annoying to platform through with unforgiving jump points including one that glitched my characters to 1 HP.
I find timed escape sequences a really bad game mechanic. They cause stress. And thus not fun.
Even a timed quiz, like in Atelier Firis, stressed me out like a real fucking exam and I had a panic attack each and every time I took it.
Anyway, in this 3rd sequence, at any point, it seems that one mistake could cost me eight minutes of real time judging by having to use nearly the entire time on the 2nd sequence.
Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Just no.
#indiegames This is easily the worst part of the game so far.
But it’s over now. I got no sense of accomplishment and felt no joy. Whatever the point of this was, it was lost the moment the timer started and my anxiety kicked in.
And I recorded the worst part...
Note: where it seems like I'm stepping off, I actually jumped, but it didn’t record the jump. #indiegames #kingdomsofthedump 
gerb