It's Bureaucracy Part 2

I've always thought that any given work is successful if it makes you feel something. It doesn't even have to produce the emotional response that it set out to inspire, like a B movie that makes you laugh instead of recoil in terror. And I think that Bureaucracy is doing that. It makes the player stressed out, which--given the subject matter--is entirely appropriate. I am completely tense and nervous as I play. There are many things to accomplish before my flight leaves, many of which I won't realize I had to do until after I've managed to get on it. I find myself dreading interacting with the characters. Fighting the parser to find the exact right combination of words that a character will accept is kind of a problem I have with any text game, though.

Which brings me to the next point. Fear. Most games have a sort of feeling that they produce in the player. It's this sort of "oh no, I'm going to die and have to do that complicated section all over again" or "if I do this, is it going to put me in an unwinnable situation?" You're hesitant to use items or even explore for fear of messing up the game somehow, even though failure is relatively easy to recover from. I'm finding that I need to relax and learn how to accomplish one goal, like getting some cash, without worrying about being able to do it before the time limit, and then once I've figured out how to achieve all the items on my pre-flight checklist work on streamlining the process.