"When I first tried this game, I quickly put it aside in irritation. I wasn't really sure what to do although things seemed urgent, daemons kept going off, and a monster kept showing up and killing me. Bah. But when I put it aside I made the mental note that maybe I hadn't given it a fair shot, so a week later I started Distress up again, and I'm really glad I did. Ok, yeah, it does have a lot going on — probably more than the author realizes, since he knows which daemon messages are important and which are just color, but the player doesn't. But once you get a handle on what's going on, it's much easier to pick out the moves you need to make and the messages you need to pay attention to. Although I still think it's too easy to get killed at the beginning, Snyder clearly put a lot of work into beta-testing. The game requires a number of somewhat exotic commands, but the parsing of them is very smooth and I didn't have any problem making myself understood. The other parts of the game are also quite solid: the puzzles aren't too hard but they're satisfying once you understand the world-logic; the storyline is interesting and the game is the right length to handle it; and the ending is slightly unexpected while still following logically from the rest of the game. This comp is woefully short on puzzle games — if you're in the mood for one, Distress is definitely worth putting the time into."