An exploration of difficulty in game design. Back when I was a kid, my favourite games were NES/SNES 2D platformers, many of which have a deserved reputation of being very challenging. Since I started playing games again last year, I am mostly enjoying… well, the same genre. I do enjoy the thrill of beating these difficult games, but the question ‘What is this difficulty in service of?’ is one that isn’t asked enough. I enjoyed playing through Cuphead—it was very difficult to learn the patterns and respond to them, but a delight to see and listen to, and when you died you could very quickly restart again. I’m currently on the penultimate level of Super Meat Boy, in which you can die, respawn and die again 10 times in around a minute. Ditto Slime-San. But repeatedly playing long sections of games only to lose over and over again to a difficult boss—no thanks. Games don’t have to be challenging to be good; it is just one aspect of their overall design. (I say this before I play Ghosts ‘n Goblins Resurrection, the recent revival of a 30-year-old franchise that has immense difficulty as one of its defining features.)