Spotting a fair difficulty curve

A good difficulty curve teaches you before it tests you. If a game throws a brutal wave at you with a mechanic it never explained, that's usually a sign of trouble ahead.

When we review, we watch the first hour closely. Does the game introduce one idea at a time? Does losing feel like your mistake, or like the game cheating? Those questions predict a lot about the later chapters.

Fair games also let you recover. A single bad decision shouldn't doom a twenty-minute run with no way back. The best ones give you a window to adapt, even if it's tight.

If you're deciding whether to keep playing something, ask yourself if you learned anything from your last loss. If the answer is yes, it's probably worth continuing.