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I've no idea why I was drawn to the North first, but that was the direction that quickly had symbols on the map, and targets to aim for. I'd remembered seeing those guards blocking the exits. I had the strong impression when playing that the game had opened up a path to the North, while the other three directions were still blocked off by guards. Instead it relies on ambiguity and pictographic allusions. The game doesn't use much comprehensible language to communicate. In fact, I'd praised HLD in my original piece for being so obtuse! I enjoyed that it wanted players to use their experience of games to make leaps in this one - not something I'd like to see many games doing as it's so alienating to the new. I think it's really important to be clear about one thing: expectation is heavily relied upon when games are as deliberately obtuse as this. It's extremely helpful and always very welcome to know when a mistake has been made.
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Thank you to people who got in touch to politely point this out to me. So I've gone back to the game to reappraise based on this. Due to a combination of incorrect assumptions I'd made while playing, and some poor communication from the game, I had failed to notice I could have gone off in other directions that weren't flagged as now open, and gathered more abilities, before making another attempt on that boss, and indeed the others. Last week I played Hyper Light Drifter and wrote my thoughts - thoughts stymied by reaching a boss I couldn't even get close to killing, and believing my progress was blocked.