Well, yeah. The atmosphere of dispair is intentional. And it is entirely reasonable to get a full settlement wipe in the first attempt because resources have a snowball effect and regularly losing to monsters (or just wasting resources) will lead to you being underprepared for later on. After a certain point, you are forced to choose level 3 hunts, and are frankly dead-without-knowing-it if you aren’t ready for those (though, I can’t imagine surviving the “game over” fight prior to that if you’re not ready for level 3 hunts)

If you think of it as the settlement being your main character, however, it’s a lot less terrible. But still brutal because yes, sanity and body parts go flying in a heartbeat. And there’s at least one or two “if _____ all 4 survivors immediately die” ultra-rare moments that are pretty terrible (but usually salvageable)

For sure. Though I’ll be honest, I actually prefer lower difficulty games because I like a casual stomp :) I’ve only beaten one level 6 adversary, but half the reason is that I prefer level 3 or less adversaries even when I play the spirit I’ve beaten level 6 adversaries with. Hell, I’ll even play base difficulty a lot when I just want to knock around with other spirits.

Half of the “perfection” for me is that Spirit Island gives you the game you want to play when you want to play it, as long as it’s a cooperative game with spirits murdering civilized invaders :).

I wouldn’t say that’s entirely true if you understand the game enough (at least the base game). It punishes survivors for the sake of it, but that doesn’t mean it’s punishing the player, or the player’s chance to achieve victory. The examples of fully prepared survivors doing the right things against the monster and still losing are surprisingly far and few betwee. Except when you expect to lose and hedge for that (certain middle-game boss fights). Remember, there’s dying rewards that are sometimes more valuable than the corpses that created them.

I mean, there’s two settlement events that were downright unfair. The bad one was patched. The other “just sucks” and isn’t game breaking. What you’re saying is not entirely off-base… I just daresay it’s a little off-base.

But also similarly, the game punishes monsters for the sake of it, too. The two you fight most often can (and rarely do) die from your first attack (not always ideal, admittedly). As one of my favorite streamers has pointed out, a key strategic point in KDM is that unless you believe in woo-woo dice, the pendulum swings both ways on chance and if you outplay the monster with a prepared party you WILL win within an expected number of casualties… And while that might mean your favorite survivor loses an arm suddenly (or worse), it also is “enough” to tier up your survivors for a victory. I’ve never seen a seasoned KDM player struggle in the final phases of the game.

A lot of us are stumbling that way. Community recognition is a little less obvious than it was with “that platform”

The only real negative points that Spirit Island gets from me is that it can be a bit anticlimactic

I’ve heard this before, but it’s never happened for me above the base difficult for a couple reasons.

First, as you say there’s usually more events than you can prepare for, and having them cascade a few turns in a row can help the invaders catch up. Further, at your own highest difficulties you often do not know you’re going to win more than 1 turn in advance. Very often there’s “I got this unless Wetlands comes up, then I just might be screwed”. Yes, the flip-side of “I win unless ____ comes up. If that happens, I immediately lose”, but I don’t think there’s a way to reconcile perfect predictability with unpredictability without some negatives showing up.

That, and nothing is quite so badass as being able to drop a surprise major and expedite that “easy win” by a turn or two. I love when I get just that right major and clear a dozen invaders at once. Like I had this recent solo ocean game where as I was falling behind I managed to drop Draw Towards a Consuming Void and double-playing it let me drown 8 invaders (and kill others) to full-clear the board and land myself a dozen (useless) energy as well as finishing the fear deck at the same time as the board. That was glorious!

I mean, I get that some games at low difficulties with minors-only spirits can turn into a dull steamroll, but I just don’t feel that like others do.

… however, all your complaints are not present in Kingdom Death: Monster :)

I’ve got two contentious ones (for different reasons), but I stand by them. They hold 2 of my 3 top all-time "played’ positions despite having gotten them recently in life (the third is Dominion, which misses this list by just a few centimeters)

Game 1? Spirit Island. I think it’s the best cooperative survival strategy ever made. The “almost” in its perfection is the need to ease a new player in, but my experience is that literally anyone can “click” with a low-complexity spirit and run with it indefinitely. And then the game has room to grow in every direction. Complexity? More/different spirits. Difficulty? The base difficulty leads you to nearly 100% win rate, but adding events or adversaries give a slow (but real) increase up to the highest difficulties that approach a 0% win rate even at the highest level of play. Why is this contentious? It’s popular and new, and everyone (including me) is hesitant to pick a game like that as a GOAT.

Now the opposite side of the coin, possibly edging out Spirit Island slightly… Kingdom Death: Monster. Let’s get the “not quite perfect” out of the way fast - the price is absolutely oppressive, and buying my used copy was as much of a risk as an investment. Knowing the current expansion list is over a grand and there’s another expansion set sitting in the store at $1250, that’s a hard pill to swallow if you need to own everything about a game! But you talked theme in Terraforming Mars - KD:M is the king of theme. It’s a brutalist masterpiece that has no hesitation turning a mistake into a “time to start from scratch” campaign-wipe at the 30 or 40 hour mark. Its mechanics are reasonable enough for any gamer to pick up, but its playstyle is simple enough that even a non-gamer can become fully immersed as long as they have someone running the rules in the background for them.