A lot of indie games feel strongest when they commit to a narrow idea, but the same restraint can turn into a weird kind of friction if the player has to guess too much. I think the hard part is knowing when a limitation reads as elegance and when it just reads as undercooked.
Where do people draw that line for you?
For me the line is whether the missing stuff is something I can safely assume, or whether I’m stuck doing detective work. If the game’s rules feel consistent enough that I can predict what it won’t do, it reads as elegant; when I keep bumping into “wait, can I not do that here?” moments, it starts feeling undercooked.
For me the line is whether the stuff the game “leaves out” is replaced by a really legible feedback loop. If I can predict what the game wants from me after a couple tries, it reads as elegant; if I’m failing and can’t tell why, it starts feeling undercooked fast.
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