[mdaniel]

My heartburn with ONI is that it seems to fall into that category of game that is all about "it's all about the journey, and discovery!11" which makes debugging anything incredibly hard. Why is water not flowing? Who knows, the computer won't help me

Life also doesn't come with an instruction manual nor any handy mouse-overs, but in life I can use my existing years of experience and non-2D view of the world to deduce what's wrong. In a game, I only have access to the information the game chooses to share with me

I tried to get a refund, but Steam was all "nope"

[Fradow]

I feel you, but unless you really want to experience the game without any outside resource (in which case, good luck, and I understand being turned off), I really encourage you to try again while using guides, the wiki, and asking questions on forums/discord.

The community is overall very welcoming, and it's an old game by now, with most things figured out.

[mdaniel]

> I really encourage you to try again while using guides, the wiki, and asking questions on forums/discord.

Some people talk about hating Shenzen I/O and TIS-100 for being "too close to my day job," but for me having to troll through wikis, forums, and (heavenforbid) chat channels in order to debug a computer problem caused by someone not caring about my experience is too close to my day job. I got an adrenaline jolt just reading your sentence because my experience with those things is so incredibly enraging

I just chalk it up to "yet another game that's not for me," similar to my prior contact with Dwarf Fortress. I had actually considered buying the graphical version if it was a "reasonable price" but I'm not paying $25 for masochism