I have a design-related candidate that I think is kind of interesting, because I suspect that being difficult to mentally parse might be part of its design intention: Super Weekend Mode
So, the aesthetics are cool, the name is excellent, just to get that out of the way. That trailer is probably hard to visually parse, too, but once you get in there, it’s pretty simple: you’re controlling those two things at the bottom of the screen simultaneously, they constantly autofire, and you must shoot the hearts to keep the screen from closing in and crushing you (miss a heart and the screen shrinks) while also shooting the character in the middle of the screen to deplete its HP and move on to the next level
The “hard to mentally parse” part comes in with the controls (at least on console). The entire game is controlled with the shoulder buttons, one for each (I’ll call them) “turret” at the bottom of the screen. So, “L” moves the left turret, “R” moves the right turret. However, each turret can of course move either left or right – the left turret will start moving right once it hits the edge of the screen, for instance – so in many cases, you’re pressing “L” to move something to the right, or pressing “R” to move another thing to the left. Which means that you constantly have to keep track of where each turret is in its movement cycle (“OK, ‘L’ is going to move the left turret left right now, and ‘R’ is going to move the right turret left”). I’m sure it “clicks” with different kinds of brains, but not with mine
I find it a really interesting little game and pop it on to try again every so often. Every time, I of course think, “I have two analog sticks right here, why can’t I just use these to move the corresponding turrets?” That’s clearly the most obvious way to do things, which makes it seem like a choice was made to not do that. So I have to imagine that being innately unintuitive for your brain to wrap around is an intentional decision here?
