The Devs spent a lot of time making sure you understand the game in the first 30 minutes. 80’s Devs didn’t do that and it shows in how hard the learning curve of the game is.
It goes even farther than that: games in the 80s didn’t even necessarily have consistent designs that could be trained in the first 30 minutes. Especially the adventure games. They were also perfectly willing to let you lose the game in act 1 but not tell you about it until act 3, where the way they do “tell you” is you don’t have any possible solution for a problem.
Like if you don’t get that delicious pie plus another food source early on, you’ll either die of starvation or the yeti will eat you later in the game.
But if you know what to do, the game becomes trivial.
I think Factorio perfectly proves your point.
The Devs spent a lot of time making sure you understand the game in the first 30 minutes. 80’s Devs didn’t do that and it shows in how hard the learning curve of the game is.
It goes even farther than that: games in the 80s didn’t even necessarily have consistent designs that could be trained in the first 30 minutes. Especially the adventure games. They were also perfectly willing to let you lose the game in act 1 but not tell you about it until act 3, where the way they do “tell you” is you don’t have any possible solution for a problem.
Like if you don’t get that delicious pie plus another food source early on, you’ll either die of starvation or the yeti will eat you later in the game.
But if you know what to do, the game becomes trivial.