Category: Blog

This quarter, Hulu is once again the center of reality TV. The Kardashians, a Hulu classic, will air in time 6 on February 6 and follows the famous family as they go about their life. a number of real TV programs produced by Warner Bros. This month, Discovery Umbrella will also be bringing new seasons of [ …] to Hulu.

The article Hulu New Releases: February 2025 appeared second on Den of Geek.

The Nintendo Switch 2 is just around the corner, and after eight years on the market, it’s hard to say the first Nintendo Switch was anything other than a huge success. Sure, it may have the power of a new Xbox or PlayStation, but the cross features, modern feedback of the Joy-Con controllers, and large library of Nintendo classics and third-party ports has made it the desired console for millions of people around the world.

There’s a little something for everyone in the Nintendo Switch collection, particularly if you’re looking for a problem. These are the 15 most difficult Nintendo Switch game, between brand-new, cranked up, and old favorites that have been ported to the program.

15. Ikaruga

Day hasn’t made Ikaruga any easier since it was first released for galleries in 2001, and the Switch interface doesn’t have any cutting-edge changes to lower the problems. This is true gun hell with a still-innovative polarisation system. You can alter the polarisation of your deliver to white or black at any time and process bullets from those colors to power up a specific attack. But getting hit by a shot of the wrong shade, and you’ll gain a ship.

Although Ikaruga may seem like a straightforward idea, once the bullets start flying, it can be a little challenging to know all of its designs. Any player who is defeat its five stages can still be proud of their accomplishments, especially if they can do it without sacrificing any of their lives.

14. Super Mario Maker 2

Super Mario Maker 2 contains truly two sports. The first is narrative style, a challenging, but not terribly difficult variety of amounts developed by Nintendo that most Mario veterans will be able to hit after a few days with a fair&#8212, but not terribly excessive&#8212, number of deaths.

Then there’s the online function, where sadists go to great lengths to make the most absurdly challenging gameplay levels ever created and that less than one percent of players really does defeat in some cases. If you choose to enter this setting and actually attempt to complete some of these levels, does God have mercy on your heart.

13. Hades

Hades is generally a result of practice and luck, like any other game, but it also has some peculiarities that make it one of the more challenging names in the music. Second, to truly beat the game and see the certificates, you’ll have to beat the final director not once, not twice, but a whopping 10 occasions, a feat that will get most gamers dozens of hours.

However, you can manually raise the difficulty for additional rewards after successfully defeating Hades. Some of these modifiers make enemies more difficult to defeat or cause bosses to attack, making one player’s feat of genius impossible to accomplish until it was finally accomplished and posted it online.

12. Dark Souls: Remastered

Without Dark Souls, where would a list of hard games be? The Switch version isn’t significantly different from any of the other versions that have come out since 2011, other than the fact that you can now die a lot while traveling. With all of its occasionally cheap enemies and occasionally confusing level design meant to beat you down, this game is essentially the same we’ve been playing since the PS3 era.

The only reason Dark Souls is so low on the list is that there are already plenty of online guides that will teach you how to power up quickly and quickly defeat the most challenging bosses. However, if you don’t get it all wrong, you still have one of the most challenging games to play.

11. Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne HD Remaster

You’ll hear from experienced Shin Megami Tensei players that the games aren’t that challenging. The problem is, that view really only comes from experience. If you go into Shin Megami Tensei III blind, you will almost definitely die a lot, even on normal difficulty. &nbsp,

Kind of like Dark Souls, there’s just a lot here the game doesn’t tell you about fusing demons and shoring up your party’s weaknesses. Most gamers will tell you their first encounter with the series was nothing but easy once you understand the game’s mechanics and are able to properly prepare for battles.

10. Dead Cells

Another beloved roguelike, Dead Cells took a lot of cues from Dark Souls, but just moved the action to 2D. You have a pretty good idea of what the difficulty will be with that kind of inspiration. Dead Cells is a fantastic game overall, but what’s frustrating about it is how random and unfair it can be.

You’ll get strong equipment and a good run going so you can start dominating everything in your path. Then the game will unintentionally end your run with a brand-new boss you’ve never seen before who crushes you in ten seconds.

9. Darkest Dungeon

You are aware of how we previously stated that Shin Megami Tensei III can at least be defeated with proper planning? Darkest Dungeon takes that one advantage away with its procedurally-generated dungeons. You might think your party is ready for what’s ahead, but if the game throws something way overpowered at you, you’re going to be dead, or maybe worse, insane.

Darkest Dungeon‘s most unique feature is its stress level. If your party is stressed by too much darkness, lack of food, or blights from enemies, they’ll stop listening to you, or they might even have a heart attack. Darkest Dungeon is much more challenging than the typical RPG due to having to deal with stress.

8. Thumper

The developers of Thumper describe it as a “rhythm violence” game. A few minutes of gameplay demonstrate what exactly that means. You operate as a space beetle that moves along a track while avoiding obstacles and defeating enemies to maintain rhythm with the music.

The difficulty of Thumper is moderately high, but like many great rhythm games, even the most experienced veterans of other rhythm games will struggle to keep up. Each level number corresponds to a time signature, and the later levels become so extreme that even the most experienced players will struggle to keep up.

7. Baba is You

Over the course of more than 400 levels, you’ll be forced to question your intelligence in Baba is You, a completely original puzzle game. You are presented with several word tiles in each stage of the screen that you must arrange to achieve the goal. That can begin as straightforward as arranging the phrase “flag is win,” but the difficulty quickly increases.

Once you get more deeply into the game, it’s simple to understand how quickly a level will be broken by altering the nature of your character or the world itself. And later levels ‘ use of words becomes much vaguer, leading to a frustrating rather than enjoyable experience.

6. HD version of Donkey Kong Country Returns

Donkey Kong Country Returns HD is technically the newest entry on this list since it only launched in January of this year, but it also serves as a port of a 2010 Wii game, making it one of the older games on the list. The difficulty also depends a lot on the mode you choose to play. There are plenty of power ups available, making it a challenging but not impossible game to get through. In mode, Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong can share six hearts between themselves.

But if you play in classic mode, you’re in for a rough time. Donkey Kong Country Returns ‘ numerous mine cart and barrel levels will test all of your platforming abilities because there are only four hearts between the Kongs and there are fewer powerups, so not everyone will pass the credits.

5. Metroid Dread

Metroid Dread initially came with only a normal and hard difficulty selectable, and even normal difficulty was pretty darn hard, despite receiving an update with an easier difficulty mode after its release. The changes to the old Metroid formula are a major source of the difficulty. In intense stealth situations, Samus encounters the new EMMI robot foes, initially with little chance of catching her and only a short window of escape. Those parts of the game, which sometimes involve complex control combinations, can be tough, even when you acquire a weapon to take down these deadly enemies.

Then there are the challenging boss fights, which made many gamers give up before the final cutscene. In particular, the final boss, a demanding three-stage fight that requires almost perfect timing to overcome, may be the most difficult in the entire franchise.

4. Super Meat Boy&nbsp,

Another title, Super Meat Boy, was released far before its Switch debut, but it hasn’t been completely diluted for casual gamers. Super Meat Boy has some of the tightest platforming controls around, but that doesn’t do anything to ease the difficulty.

There are just so many obstacles that need to be evaded in each of its more than 300 levels that it takes real skills to get the game to the end. You’ll probably try your hardest to watch the final cut, even though the game gets really addictive in the later levels.

3. Celeste

Another extremely challenging platform in the same vein as Super Meat Boy, Celeste. The game requires absolute mastery of its jumping, dashing, and climbing mechanics if you plan to see it to the end, but don’t expect that to be a quick journey. On forums, posts about players dying repeatedly on a single level are not uncommon.

Celeste does feature a highly customizable “assist mode” that can provide you with lowered game speed, unlimited dashes, or even invincibility, but without that it’s a real chore to get through the challenging B-side and C-side levels, or gather all the game’s collectibles.

2. Hollow Knight

The subterranean insectoid world that Hollow Knight has undoubtedly drawn in many unsuspecting gamers has a wonderfully strange graphical style that illustrates its wonderfully strange world. Every aspect of this game’s difficulty is pushed up to the highest level, despite having a traditional Metroidvania at its core. Even a tough run in with a group of regular enemies could put you out, and the dozens of tough bosses can put you to death quickly.

The most annoying aspect of Hollow Knight is that there is so little direction about where to go next, it’s very simple to go down a path you’re not yet prepared to handle, and you can have all of your progress erased in a blink of an eye.

1. Cuphead&nbsp,

First off, let us just say that we absolutely love Cuphead’s aesthetic. With a jazz soundtrack and a beautifully animated love letter to 1930s cartoons, the game will leave you humming well after you put the controller down. The run-and-gun gameplay is solid, too. It’s just so damn hard.

There are no real shortcuts to getting past Cuphead‘s numerous challenging bosses. You simply need to understand their patterns before mastering the muscle memory necessary to accurately time parries and attacks. If you actually do defeat the Devil, you can feel great accomplishment here, but not everyone gamer will be willing to put in the effort.

The first post on Den of Geek was titled 15 of the greatest Nintendo Switch games ever.

Someone may perhaps had told you at some point over the past few years that you should definitely read The Murderbot Diaries if you read science fiction or have someone who does. At first glance, you may know why. Martha Wells ‘ book series chronicles the adventures of a purpose-grown security ]… ]

The article May the Apple TV + Adaptation Find The Murderbot Journals Right? second appeared on Den of Geek.

The Nintendo Switch 2 is just around the corner, and after eight years on the market, it’s hard to say the first Nintendo Switch was anything other than a huge success. Sure, it may have the power of a new Xbox or PlayStation, but the cross features, modern feedback of the Joy-Con controllers, and large library of Nintendo classics and third-party ports has made it the desired console for millions of people around the world.

There’s a little something for everyone in the Nintendo Switch collection, particularly if you’re looking for a challenge. These are the 15 most difficult Nintendo Switch matches, between brand-new, higher-end titles and old friends that have been system-ported.

15. Ikaruga

Day hasn’t made Ikaruga any easier since it was first released for galleries in 2001, and the Switch interface doesn’t have any cutting-edge changes to lower the problems. A still-innovative polarisation system dominates this, creating real bullet hell. You can also adjust your ship’s polarity to white or black at any time and digest specific attack bullets to match that color. But getting hit by a shot of the wrong colour, and you’ll gain a ship.

Although Ikaruga may seem like a straightforward idea, once the bullets start flying, it can be a little challenging to know all of its designs. Any gamer who is survive its five stages can still be proud of their success, especially if they can do it without losing a life.

14. Super Mario Maker 2

Super Mario Maker 2 contains truly two sports. The first is narrative style, a challenging, but not terribly difficult variety of amounts developed by Nintendo that most Mario veterans will be able to hit after a few days with a fair&#8212, but not terribly excessive&#8212, number of deaths.

Then there’s the online mode, where sadists have gone out of their way to create the most absurdly challenging multitasking rates ever created and that less than one cent of people may actually defeat in some cases. If you choose to enter this setting and actually attempt to complete some of these levels, does God have mercy on your heart.

13. Hades

Hades ‘ issues, like any game, largely depends on a combination of exercise and luck, but it also introduces some peculiarities that make it one of the more challenging titles in the genre. Second, to truly beat the game and see the certificates, you’ll have to beat the final director not once, not twice, but a whopping 10 occasions, a feat that will get most players dozens of hours.

However, you can manually raise the difficulty for additional rewards after successfully defeating Hades. Some of these modifiers increase the number of enemies or the way bosses attack, making it impossible for developers to master the hardest difficulty until a successful user posted it online and posted it.

12. Dark Souls: Remastered

Without Dark Souls, where would a list of hard games be? The Switch version isn’t significantly different from any of the other versions that have come out since 2011, other than the fact that you can now die frequently while traveling. With all of its occasionally cheap enemies and occasionally confusing level design, this game is essentially the same as it was when we’ve been playing it since the PS3 era.

The only reason Dark Souls is so low on the list is that there are already plenty of online guides that will teach you how to power up quickly and quickly defeat the most challenging bosses. However, if you enter it blind, you will still find this to be one of the most challenging games.

11. Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne HD Remaster

You’ll hear from experienced Shin Megami Tensei players that the games aren’t that challenging. The problem is, that view really only comes from experience. If you go into Shin Megami Tensei III blind, you will almost definitely die a lot, even on normal difficulty. &nbsp,

Kind of like Dark Souls, there’s just a lot here the game doesn’t tell you about fusing demons and shoring up your party’s weaknesses. Most gamers will tell you their first encounter with the series was nothing but easy once you understand the game’s mechanics and are able to properly prepare for battles.

10. Dead Cells

Another beloved roguelike, Dead Cells took a lot of cues from Dark Souls, but just moved the action to 2D. You have a pretty good idea of what the difficulty will be with that kind of inspiration. Dead Cells is a fantastic game overall, but what’s frustrating about it is how random and unfair it can be.

You’ll get strong equipment and a good run going so you can start dominating everything in your path. Then the game will unintentionally end your run with a brand-new boss you’ve never seen before who crushes you in ten seconds.

9. Darkest Dungeon

You know how we previously stated that Shin Megami Tensei III can at least be defeated with proper planning? Darkest Dungeon takes that one advantage away with its procedurally-generated dungeons. You might think your party is ready for what’s ahead, but if the game throws something way overpowered at you, you’re going to be dead, or maybe worse, insane.

Darkest Dungeon‘s most unique feature is its stress level. If your party is stressed by too much darkness, lack of food, or blights from enemies, they’ll stop listening to you, or they might even have a heart attack. Darkest Dungeon is much more challenging than the typical RPG because of having to deal with the effects of stress.

8. Thumper

The developers of Thumper describe it as a “rhythm violence” game. A few minutes of gameplay demonstrate what exactly that means. You operate as a space beetle that moves along a track while avoiding obstacles and defeating enemies to maintain rhythm with the music.

The difficulty of Thumper is moderately high, but like many great rhythm games, even the most experienced veterans of other rhythm games will struggle to keep up. Each level number corresponds to a time signature, and the later levels become so extreme that even the most experienced players will struggle to keep up.

7. Baba is You

Over the course of more than 400 levels, you’ll be forced to question your intelligence in Baba is You, a completely original puzzle game. You are presented with several word tiles in each stage of the screen that you must arrange to achieve the goal. That can begin as straightforward as arranging the phrase “flag is win,” but the difficulty quickly mounts.

Once you get more deeply into the game, it’s simple to understand how quickly a level will be broken by a change in your character’s personality or the world itself. And later levels ‘ use of words becomes much vaguer, leading to a frustrating rather than enjoyable experience.

6. HD version of Donkey Kong Country Returns

Donkey Kong Country Returns HD is technically the newest entry on this list since it only launched in January of this year, but it also serves as a port of a 2010 Wii game, making it one of the older games on the list. The difficulty also depends a lot on the mode you choose to play. There are plenty of power ups available, making it a challenging but not impossible game to get through. In mode, Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong can share six hearts between themselves.

But if you play in classic mode, you’re in for a rough time. Donkey Kong Country Returns ‘ numerous mine cart and barrel levels will test all of your platforming abilities because there are only four hearts between the Kongs and there are fewer power ups, and not everyone will make it to the credits.

5. Metroid Dread

Metroid Dread initially came with only a normal and hard difficulty selectable, and even normal difficulty was pretty darn hard, despite receiving an update with an easier difficulty mode after its release. The changes to the old Metroid formula are a major source of the challenge. In intense stealth situations, Samus must deal with the new EMMI robot foes, initially with no way to defeat them and only a short window of escape when they catch her. Those parts of the game, which sometimes involve complex control combinations, can be tough, even when you acquire a weapon to take down these deadly enemies.

Then there are the challenging boss fights, which made many players give up before the final cutscene. In particular, the final boss, a demanding three-stage fight that requires almost perfect timing to overcome, may be the most difficult in the entire franchise.

4. Super Meat Boy&nbsp,

Another title, Super Meat Boy, was originally released elsewhere long before its Switch debut, but it hasn’t been completely diluted for casual gamers. Super Meat Boy has some of the tightest platforming controls around, but that doesn’t do anything to ease the difficulty.

There are just so many obstacles that need to be evaded in each of its more than 300 levels that it takes real skills to get the game to the end. Even though the later levels are incredibly addicting, you’ll probably try your hardest to watch the final scene.

3. Celeste

Another extremely challenging platform in the same league as Super Meat Boy, Celeste. The game requires absolute mastery of its jumping, dashing, and climbing mechanics if you plan to see it to the end, but don’t expect that to be a quick journey. On forums, posts about players dying hundreds of times on a single level are not uncommon.

Celeste does feature a highly customizable “assist mode” that can provide you with lowered game speed, unlimited dashes, or even invincibility, but without that it’s a real chore to get through the challenging B-side and C-side levels, or gather all the game’s collectibles.

2. Hollow Knight

Hollow Knight‘s wonderfully strange graphical design perfectly captures the world’s subterranean insectoid environment, which undoubtedly attracted a lot of unsuspecting gamers. Every aspect of this game’s difficulty is pushed to the max, despite having a traditional Metroidvania core. You can get overrun by dozens of difficult bosses quickly, and even a difficult run into a group of regular enemies could get you kicked out.

The most annoying aspect of Hollow Knight is that there is so little direction about where to go next, it’s very simple to go down a path you’re not yet prepared to handle, and you can have your entire progress erased in a flash ( though admittedly this feature has fans as well ).

1. Cuphead&nbsp,

First off, let us just say that we absolutely love Cuphead’s aesthetic. With a jazz soundtrack and a beautifully animated soundtrack for 1930s cartoons, you’ll be humming along with the controller. The run-and-gun gameplay is solid, too. It’s just so damn hard.

There are no real shortcuts to getting past Cuphead‘s numerous challenging bosses. You simply need to understand their patterns before mastering the muscle memory necessary to accurately time parries and attacks. If you actually do defeat the Devil, you’ll feel great about yourself, but not everyone gamer will be willing to put in the effort.

The first post on Den of Geek was titled 15 of the greatest Nintendo Switch games ever.

More of Marvel’s Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man will be released each year until the season finale on February 19 in this quarter of Disney +’s video schedule. In this adaptation of Peter Parker’s tale, the youthful web-slinging protagonist tries to balance being a typical high school student with being a […]

The post Disney + New Releases: February 2025 appeared first on Den of Geek.

After eight years on the market, it’s difficult to say the Nintendo Switch 2 was anything other than a huge success. Sure, it may have the power of a new Xbox or PlayStation, but the cross features, modern feedback of the Joy-Con controllers, and large library of Nintendo classics and third-party ports has made it the desired console for millions of people around the world.

There’s a little something for everyone in the Nintendo Switch libraries, particularly if you’re looking for a challenge. These are the 15 most difficult Nintendo Switch activities, between brand-new, higher-end titles and old friends that have been system-ported.

15. Ikaruga

Time has certainly made Ikaruga any easier, and the Switch interface doesn’t include any contemporary changes to lower the trouble, as initially released for galleries in 2001. A still-innovative polarisation system dominates this, creating real bullet hell. You can alter the polarisation of your deliver to white or black at any time and process bullets from those colors to power up a specific attack. But getting hit by a shot of the wrong shade, and you’ll gain a ship.

Although the idea seems easy, learning Ikaruga may be incredibly challenging once the shots start flying. Any athlete who is defeat its five stages can still be proud of their accomplishment, especially if they can do it without sacrificing a life.

14. Super Mario Maker 2

Super Mario Maker 2 contains truly two sports. The first is narrative style, a challenging, but not terribly difficult variety of amounts developed by Nintendo that most Mario veterans will be able to hit after a few days with a fair&#8212, but not terribly excessive&#8212, number of deaths.

Then there’s the online mode, where sadists have gone out of their way to create the most absurdly challenging multitasking rates ever created and that less than one cent of people may actually defeat in some cases. If you choose to enter this setting and actually attempt to complete some of these levels, does God have mercy on your heart.

13. Hades

Hades is generally a result of practice and luck, like any other game, but it also has some peculiarities that make it one of the more challenging names in the music. First, to truly beat the game and see the credits, you’ll have to defeat the final boss not once, not twice, but a whopping 10 times, a feat that will take most players dozens of hours.

However, you can manually raise the difficulty for additional rewards after successfully defeating Hades. Some of these modifiers make enemies more difficult to defeat or cause bosses to attack, making one player’s feat of genius impossible to accomplish until it was finally accomplished and posted it online.

12. Dark Souls: Remastered

Without Dark Souls, where would a list of hard games be? The Switch version isn’t significantly different from any of the other versions that have come out since 2011, other than the fact that you can now die frequently while traveling. With all of its occasionally cheap enemies and occasionally confusing level design, this game is essentially the same as it was when we’ve been playing it since the PS3 era.

The only reason Dark Souls is so low on the list is that there are already plenty of online guides that will teach you how to cheese it to power up early and quickly defeat the most difficult bosses. However, this game is still among the most challenging if you don’t get too far in.

11. Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne HD Remaster

You’ll hear from experienced Shin Megami Tensei players that the games aren’t that challenging. The problem is, that view really only comes from experience. If you go into Shin Megami Tensei III blind, you will almost definitely die a lot, even on normal difficulty. &nbsp,

Kind of like Dark Souls, there’s just a lot here the game doesn’t tell you about fusing demons and shoring up your party’s weaknesses. Most gamers will tell you their first encounter with the series was nothing but easy once you understand the game’s mechanics and are able to properly prepare for battles.

10. Dead Cells

Another beloved roguelike, Dead Cells took a lot of cues from Dark Souls, but just moved the action to 2D. You have a pretty good idea of what the difficulty will be like if you have that kind of inspiration. Dead Cells is a fantastic game overall, but what frustrates players is how random and unfair it can be.

You’ll start out strong with strong equipment and a good run, so you can start dominating everyone in your path. Then the game will unintentionally end your run with a brand-new boss you’ve never seen before who crushes you in ten seconds.

9. Darkest Dungeon

You know how we previously stated that Shin Megami Tensei III can at least be defeated with proper planning? Darkest Dungeon takes that one advantage away with its procedurally-generated dungeons. You might think your party is ready for what’s ahead, but if the game throws something way overpowered at you, you’re going to be dead, or maybe worse, insane.

Darkest Dungeon‘s most unique feature is its stress level. If your party is stressed by too much darkness, lack of food, or blights from enemies, they’ll stop listening to you, or they might even have a heart attack. Darkest Dungeon is much more challenging than the typical RPG due to having to deal with stress.

8. Thumper

The developers of Thumper describe it as a “rhythm violence” game. A few minutes of gameplay demonstrate what exactly that means. You operate as a space beetle that moves along a track while avoiding obstacles and defeating enemies to maintain rhythm with the music.

The difficulty of Thumper begins with a respectable pace, like many great rhythm games, but each level number corresponds to a time signature, and the later levels become so extreme that even the most experienced veterans of other rhythm games will struggle to keep up.

7. Baba is You

Over the course of more than 400 levels, you’ll be forced to question your intelligence in Baba is You, a completely original puzzle game. You are presented with several word tiles in each stage of the screen that you must arrange to achieve the goal. That can begin as straightforward as arranging the phrase “flag is win,” but the difficulty quickly increases.

Once you get into the game’s more in-depth details, it’s simple to understand how quickly a level will be broken by a change in your character’s personality or the world itself. And later levels, the meaning of the words becomes much vaguer, leading to a more annoying experience than enjoyable.

6. HD version of Donkey Kong Country Returns

Donkey Kong Country Returns HD is technically the newest entry on this list since it only launched in January of this year, but it also serves as a port of a 2010 Wii game, making it one of the older games on the list. The difficulty also greatly depends on the mode you choose to play. There are plenty of powerups available, making it a challenging but manageable game to get through. In mode, Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong can share six hearts between themselves.

But if you play in classic mode, you’re in for a rough time. Donkey Kong Country Returns ‘ numerous mine cart and barrel levels will test all of your platforming abilities because there are only four hearts between the Kongs and there are fewer power ups, and not everyone will make it to the credits.

5. Metroid Dread

Metroid Dread initially came with only a normal and hard difficulty selectable, and even normal difficulty was pretty damn hard, despite receiving an update with an easier difficulty mode after release. The adaptations to the old Metroid formula pose a significant challenge. In intense stealth situations, Samus must deal with the new EMMI robot foes, initially with no way to defeat them and only a short window of escape when they catch her. Those parts of the game, which sometimes involve complex control combinations, can be tough, even when you acquire a weapon to take down these deadly enemies.

Then there are the challenging boss fights, which made many players give up before the final cutscene. In particular, the final boss, a demanding three-stage fight that requires almost perfect timing to overcome, may be the most difficult in the entire franchise.

4. Super Meat Boy&nbsp,

Another title, Super Meat Boy, was originally released elsewhere long before its Switch debut, but it hasn’t been completely diluted for casual gamers. Super Meat Boy has some of the tightest platforming controls around, but that doesn’t do anything to ease the difficulty.

There are just so many obstacles that need to be evaded in each of its more than 300 levels that it takes real skills to get the game to the end. Even though the later levels are incredibly addicting, you’ll probably try your hardest to watch the final scene.

3. Celeste

Another extremely challenging platform, similar to Super Meat Boy, is Celeste. The game requires absolute mastery of its jumping, dashing, and climbing mechanics if you plan to see it to the end, but don’t expect that to be a quick journey. On forums, posts about players dying repeatedly on a single level are not uncommon.

Celeste does feature a highly customizable “assist mode” that can provide you with lowered game speed, unlimited dashes, or even invincibility, but without that it’s a real chore to get through the challenging B-side and C-side levels, or gather all the game’s collectibles.

2. Hollow Knight

Hollow Knight‘s wonderfully strange graphical design perfectly captures the world’s subterranean insectoid environment, which undoubtedly attracted a lot of unsuspecting gamers. Every aspect of this game’s difficulty is pushed up to the highest level, despite having a traditional Metroidvania at its core. Even a tough run in with a group of regular enemies might put you out, and the dozens of tough bosses can put you to death quickly.

The most annoying aspect of Hollow Knight is that there is so little direction about where to go next, it’s very simple to go down a path you’re not yet prepared to handle, and you can have your entire progress erased in a blink of an eye.

1. Cuphead&nbsp,

First off, let us just say that we absolutely love Cuphead’s aesthetic. With a jazz soundtrack and a beautifully animated love letter to 1930s cartoons, the game will leave you humming well after you put the controller down. The run-and-gun gameplay is solid, too. It’s just so damn hard.

There are no real shortcuts to getting past Cuphead‘s numerous challenging bosses. You simply need to understand their patterns before mastering the muscle memory necessary to accurately time parries and attacks. If you actually do defeat the Devil, you can feel great accomplishment here, but not everyone gamer will be willing to put in the effort to get there.

On Den of Geek, the first post 15 of the greatest Nintendo Switch games ever made an appearance.

When is the best time to unleash bone-crushing blows in the streaming world? A second year of Invincible and Reacher is included in Amazon Prime Video’s list of new releases for February 2025. On February 6, Invincible year 3 will debut and will see fresh Mark Grayson level up in his […]…

The article Amazon Prime Video New Releases: February 2025 appeared initially on Den of Geek.

After eight years on the market, it’s difficult to say the Nintendo Switch 2 was anything other than a huge success. Sure, it may have the power of a new Xbox or PlayStation, but the cross features, modern feedback of the Joy-Con controllers, and large library of Nintendo classics and third-party ports has made it the desired console for millions of people around the world.

There’s a little something for everyone in the Nintendo Switch collection, particularly if you’re looking for a problem. These are the 15 most difficult Nintendo Switch matches, between brand-new, higher-end titles and old friends that have been system-ported.

15. Ikaruga

The Switch interface doesn’t add any contemporary additions to the problems, and the original version was released in 2001 for arcades. This is true shot hell with a still-innovative polarisation system. You can also adjust your ship’s polarity to white or black at any time and absorb specific attack bullets to match that color. But getting hit by a shot of the wrong shade, and you’ll gain a ship.

Although Ikaruga may seem like a straightforward idea, when the bullets start flying, it can be gratingly challenging until you master all of its designs. Any athlete who is defeat its five stages can still be proud of their accomplishments, especially if they can do it without sacrificing any of their lives.

14. Super Mario Maker 2

Super Mario Maker 2 contains actually two sports. The first is narrative style, a challenging, but not terribly difficult variety of amounts developed by Nintendo that most Mario veterans will be able to hit after a few days with a fair&#8212, but not terribly excessive&#8212, number of deaths.

Then there’s the online function, where sadists go to great lengths to make the most absurdly challenging gameplay levels ever created and that less than one percent of players really does defeat in some cases. If you choose to enter this setting and actually attempt to complete some of these levels, does God have mercy on your heart.

13. Hades

Hades is generally a result of practice and luck, like any other game, but it also has some peculiarities that make it one of the genre’s more challenging names. Second, to truly beat the game and see the certificates, you’ll have to beat the final director not once, not twice, but a whopping 10 occasions, a feat that will get most players dozens of hours.

However, you can manually raise the difficulty after defeating Hades for the first time in exchange for additional rewards. Some of these modifiers make enemies more difficult to defeat or cause bosses to attack, making one player’s feat of genius impossible to accomplish until it was finally accomplished and posted it online.

12. Dark Souls: Remastered

Without Dark Souls, where would a list of hard games be? You can now die a lot while traveling, which makes the Switch version of the Switch release not much different from the other versions since 2011. With all of its occasionally cheap enemies and occasionally confusing level design, this game is essentially the same as it was when we’ve been playing it since the PS3 era.

The only reason Dark Souls is so low on the list is that there are already plenty of online guides that will teach you how to cheese it to power up early and quickly defeat the most difficult bosses. However, if you enter it blind, you will still find this to be one of the most challenging games.

11. Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne HD Remaster

You’ll hear from experienced Shin Megami Tensei players that the games aren’t that challenging. The problem is, that view really only comes from experience. If you go into Shin Megami Tensei III blind, you will almost definitely die a lot, even on normal difficulty. &nbsp,

Kind of like Dark Souls, there’s just a lot here the game doesn’t tell you about fusing demons and shoring up your party’s weaknesses. Most gamers will tell you their first encounter with the series was nothing but easy once you understand the game’s mechanics and are able to properly prepare for battles.

10. Dead Cells

Another beloved roguelike, Dead Cells took a lot of cues from Dark Souls, but just moved the action to 2D. You have a pretty good idea of what the difficulty will be like if you have that kind of inspiration. Dead Cells is a fantastic game overall, but what’s frustrating about it is how random and unfair it can be.

You’ll get strong equipment and a good run going so you can start dominating everything in your path. Then the game will unintentionally drop a brand-new boss you’ve never seen before who crushes you in about 10 seconds, effectively halting your run.

9. Darkest Dungeon

You’ve heard above that Shin Megami Tensei III can at least be defeated with proper planning, you know? Darkest Dungeon takes that one advantage away with its procedurally-generated dungeons. You might think your party is ready for what’s ahead, but if the game throws something way overpowered at you, you’re going to be dead, or maybe worse, insane.

Darkest Dungeon‘s most unique feature is its stress level. If your party is stressed by too much darkness, lack of food, or blights from enemies, they’ll stop listening to you, or they might even have a heart attack. Darkest Dungeon is much more challenging than the typical RPG because of having to deal with the effects of stress.

8. Thumper

The developers of Thumper describe it as a “rhythm violence” game. What exactly that means is made clear in the first few minutes of gameplay. You operate as a space beetle that moves along a track while avoiding obstacles and defeating enemies to maintain rhythm with the music.

The difficulty of Thumper begins with a respectable pace, like many great rhythm games, but each level number corresponds to a time signature, and the later levels become so extreme that even the most experienced veterans of other rhythm games will struggle to keep up.

7. Baba is You

Over the course of more than 400 levels, you’ll be forced to question your intelligence in Baba is You, a completely original puzzle game. You are presented with several word tiles in each stage of the screen that you must arrange to achieve the goal. The difficulty quickly increases as the phrase “flag is win” is arranged, but it can start as simple as that.

Once you get more deeply into the game, it’s simple to understand how quickly a level will be broken by altering the nature of your character or the world itself. And later levels ‘ use of words becomes much vaguer, leading to a frustrating rather than enjoyable experience.

6. HD version of Donkey Kong Country Returns

Donkey Kong Country Returns HD is technically the newest entry on this list since it only launched in January of this year, but it also serves as a port of a 2010 Wii game, making it one of the older games on the list. The difficulty also greatly depends on the mode you choose to play. There are plenty of powerups available, making it a challenging but manageable game to get through. In mode, Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong can share six hearts between themselves.

But if you play in classic mode, you’re in for a rough time. Donkey Kong Country Returns ‘ numerous mine cart and barrel levels will test all of your platforming abilities because there are only four hearts between the Kongs and fewer power ups, and not everyone will make it to the credits.

5. Metroid Dread

Metroid Dread initially came with only a normal and hard difficulty selectable, and even normal difficulty was pretty damn hard, despite receiving an update with an easier difficulty mode after release. The changes to the old Metroid formula are a major source of the difficulty. In intense stealth situations, Samus encounters the new EMMI robot foes, initially with little chance of catching her and only a short window of escape. Those parts of the game, which sometimes involve complex control combinations, can be tough, even when you acquire a weapon to take down these deadly enemies.

Then there are the challenging boss fights, which required a lot of gamers to give up before the final cutscene. In particular, the final boss, a demanding three-stage fight that requires almost perfect timing to overcome, may be the most difficult in the entire franchise.

4. Super Meat Boy&nbsp,

Another title, Super Meat Boy, was originally released elsewhere long before its Switch debut, but it hasn’t been completely diluted for casual gamers. Super Meat Boy has some of the tightest platforming controls around, but that doesn’t do anything to ease the difficulty.

There are just so many obstacles that need to be evaded in each of its more than 300 levels that it takes real skills to get the game to the end. Even though the later levels are incredibly addicting, you’ll probably try your hardest to watch the final scene.

3. Celeste

Another extremely challenging platform in the same vein as Super Meat Boy, Celeste. The game requires absolute mastery of its jumping, dashing, and climbing mechanics if you plan to see it to the end, but don’t expect that to be a quick journey. On forums, posts about players dying repeatedly on a single level are not uncommon.

Celeste does feature a highly customizable “assist mode” that can provide you with lowered game speed, unlimited dashes, or even invincibility, but without that it’s a real chore to get through the challenging B-side and C-side levels, or gather all the game’s collectibles.

2. Hollow Knight

Hollow Knight has a fantastically strange graphical aesthetic that perfectly captures the world’s subterranean insectoid environment, which undoubtedly attracted many unsuspecting gamers. Every aspect of this game’s difficulty is pushed to the max, despite having a traditional Metroidvania core. Even a tough run in with a group of regular enemies could put you out, and the dozens of tough bosses can put you to death quickly.

The most annoying aspect of Hollow Knight is that there is so little direction about where to go next, it’s very simple to go down a path you’re not yet prepared to handle, and you can have your entire progress erased in a flash ( though admittedly this feature has fans as well ).

1. Cuphead&nbsp,

First off, let us just say that we absolutely love Cuphead’s aesthetic. With a jazz soundtrack and a beautifully animated love letter to 1930s cartoons, the game will leave you humming well after you put the controller down. The run-and-gun gameplay is solid, too. It’s just so damn hard.

There are no real shortcuts to getting past Cuphead‘s numerous challenging bosses. You simply need to understand their patterns before mastering the muscle memory necessary to accurately time parries and attacks. If you actually do defeat the Devil, you’ll feel great about yourself, but not everyone gamer will be willing to put in the effort.

The post 15 of the most difficult Nintendo Switch games ever appeared first on Den of Geek.

Like most other redos, horror movie remakes begin their journey on shaky ground. The name recognition that often gets them made is the same recognition that leads to them being judged before anyone watches. It’s hard enough to make a good movie and get people to see it; imagine having to do so while battling […]

The post The Best Horror Movie Remakes Ranked appeared first on Den of Geek.

The Nintendo Switch 2 is right around the corner, and after eight years on the market, it’s hard to call the first Nintendo Switch anything else but a massive success. Sure, it might lack the horsepower of a new Xbox or PlayStation, but the hybrid functionality, innovative feedback of the Joy-Con controllers, and massive library of Nintendo classics and third-party ports has made it the preferred console for millions of people around the world. 

There’s a little something for everyone in the Nintendo Switch library, especially if you’re looking for a challenge. Between new games with cranked up difficulty, and old favorites known for their high difficulty that have been ported to the system, these are the 15 hardest Nintendo Switch games.

15. Ikaruga

Originally released for arcades in 2001, time has not made Ikaruga any easier, and the Switch port doesn’t include any modern additions to reduce the difficulty. This is pure bullet hell with a still-innovative polarity system. At any time, you can change the polarity of your ship to white or black and absorb bullets of that color to power up a special attack. But get hit by a bullet of the wrong color, and you’ll lose a ship.

It sounds like a simple concept, but when the bullets start flying, Ikaruga can be frustratingly difficult until you learn all of its patterns. Beating its five stages is still an impressive accomplishment for any gamer, especially if you can do it without losing a life. 

14. Super Mario Maker 2

There are really two games in Super Mario Maker 2. The first is story mode, a challenging, but not terribly difficult collection of levels developed by Nintendo that most Mario veterans will be able to beat after a few days with a fair—but not terribly excessive—number of deaths.

Then there’s the online mode where sadists have gone out of their way to create the most ridiculously difficult platforming levels ever devised, and that less than one percent of players can actually beat in some cases. May God have mercy on your soul if you decide to venture into this mode and actually try to complete some of these levels.

13. Hades

Like any roguelike, difficulty in Hades largely comes down to a combination of practice and luck, but Hades also introduces some quirks that make it one of the more difficult titles in the genre. First, to truly beat the game and see the credits, you’ll have to defeat the final boss not once, not twice, but a whopping 10 times, a feat that will take most players dozens of hours.

But after defeating Hades the first time, you can manually increase the difficulty for extra rewards. Some of these modifiers increase the number of enemies or how bosses attack to the point that initially the developers thought the hardest difficulty was impossible to beat until one player finally managed to pull it off and posted it online.

12. Dark Souls: Remastered

Where would a list about hard games be without an appearance from Dark Souls? The Switch version isn’t drastically different from any of the other versions released since 2011, except you can now die a lot while on the go. This is essentially the same game we’ve been playing since the PS3 era, with all of its sometimes cheap enemies and occasionally confusing level design meant to beat you down.

The only reason Dark Souls ranks low on the list is that by now there are also plenty of guides online that will tell you how to cheese it to power up early and easily beat the most difficult bosses. But if you go into it blind, this is still one of the most difficult games around.

11. Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne HD Remaster

Longtime Shin Megami Tensei players will tell you that the games actually aren’t that difficult. The problem is, that view really only comes from experience. If you go into Shin Megami Tensei III blind, you will almost definitely die a lot, even on normal difficulty. 

Kind of like Dark Souls, there’s just a lot here the game doesn’t tell you about fusing demons and shoring up your party’s weaknesses. Once you get a grasp on the game’s mechanics and are able to properly prepare for battles, it’s not too bad, but most gamers will tell you their first encounter with the series was anything but easy.

10. Dead Cells

Another beloved roguelike, Dead Cells took a lot of cues from Dark Souls, but just moved the action to 2D. With that kind of inspiration, you have a pretty good idea of what the difficulty is going to be like. While it’s an overall fantastic game, what gets frustrating about Dead Cells is just how random and downright unfair it can be.

You’ll get a good run going, and some strong equipment so you can start dominating everything in your path. Then the game will randomly throw out a brand new boss you’ve never seen before who crushes you in about 10 seconds, promptly ending your run.

9. Darkest Dungeon

You know how we said above that Shin Megami Tensei III can at least be beaten with proper planning? Darkest Dungeon takes that one advantage away with its procedurally-generated dungeons. You might think your party is ready for what’s ahead, but if the game throws something way overpowered at you, you’re going to be dead, or maybe worse, insane.

Darkest Dungeon’s most unique feature is its stress level. If your party is stressed by too much darkness, lack of food, or blights from enemies, they’ll stop listening to you, or they might even have a heart attack. Having to deal with the effects of stress makes Darkest Dungeon much more difficult than the typical RPG.

8. Thumper

The developers of Thumper describe it as a “rhythm violence” game. A few minutes of gameplay make it clear what exactly that means. You play as a space beetle flying along a track, trying to keep rhythm with the music, while also dodging obstacles and defeating enemies.

Like many great rhythm games, Thumper’s difficulty starts out reasonably paced, but each level number corresponds with a time signature, and the later levels get so extreme that even the most seasoned veterans of other rhythm titles will have trouble keeping up.

7. Baba is You

Baba is You remains a wholly unique puzzle game that will make you question your intelligence over the course of more than 400 levels. In each one screen stage, you’re confronted with several word tiles you need to arrange in order to reach the goal. That can start off as simple as arranging the term “flag is win,” but the difficulty quickly spirals.

Once you dive further into the game, it’s easy to fall into terms that will quickly break a level by changing the nature of your character, or the world itself. And the purpose of words in later levels gets much vaguer, resulting in an experience that can be more frustrating than fun.

6. Donkey Kong Country Returns HD

Donkey Kong Country Returns HD is technically the newest release to make it onto the list since it just came out in January of this year, but it’s also a port of a 2010 Wii game, making it one of the older games on this list. The difficulty also depends quite a bit on which mode you choose to play. Modern mode allows for Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong to share six hearts between them, and there are plenty of power ups available, making it a challenging, but not impossible game to get through.

But if you play in classic mode, you’re in for a rough time. With only four hearts between the Kongs, and fewer power ups, Donkey Kong Country Returns’ numerous mine cart and barrel levels will test all of your platforming skills, and not everyone will make it to the credits.

5. Metroid Dread

While Metroid Dread received an update with an easier difficulty mode after release, it initially shipped with only a normal and hard difficulty selectable, and even normal difficulty was pretty damn hard. Much of the challenge comes from the changes to the classic Metroid formula. In tense stealth sections, Samus faces the new EMMI robot enemies, initially with no way of defeating them, and only a brief window to escape when they catch her. Those parts of the game, which sometimes involve complex control combinations, can be tough, even when you acquire a weapon to take down these deadly enemies.

Then there are the tricky boss fights, which forced many gamers to give up before the final cutscene. In particular, the final boss, a demanding three-stage fight that requires almost perfect timing to overcome, may be the most difficult in the entire franchise.

4. Super Meat Boy 

Super Meat Boy is another title that was originally released elsewhere long before its Switch debut, but that still hasn’t been watered down for casual tastes. Super Meat Boy has some of the tightest platforming controls around, but that doesn’t do anything to ease the difficulty.

In each of its more than 300 levels, there are just so many obstacles that need to be so precisely evaded, it takes real skills to see the game through to the end. While the game gets really freaking hard in the later levels, it’s just addicting enough that you’ll likely do everything you can to see the finale.

3. Celeste

Celeste is another ultra-difficult platform in the same vein as Super Meat Boy. The game requires absolute mastery of its jumping, dashing, and climbing mechanics if you plan to see it to the end, but don’t expect that to be a quick journey. It’s not uncommon to see posts on forums about players dying hundreds of times on a single level.

Celeste does feature a highly customizable “assist mode” that can provide you with lowered game speed, unlimited dashes, or even invincibility, but without that it’s a real chore to get through the challenging B-side and C-side levels, or gather all the game’s collectibles.

2. Hollow Knight

Hollow Knight has a wonderfully weird graphical style illustrating its subterranean insectoid world that no doubt lured many unsuspecting gamers in. While a traditional Metroidvania at its core, every part of this game’s difficulty is cranked up to the max. The dozens of tough bosses can end you quickly, and even a tough run in with a group of regular enemies might take you out.

The most frustrating thing about Hollow Knight (though admittedly this feature has its fans as well) is that there’s so little direction about where to go next, it’s very easy to go down a path you’re not yet equipped to handle, and have all of your progress wiped out in an instant.

1. Cuphead 

First off, let us just say that we absolutely love Cuphead’s aesthetic. The game is a beautifully animated love letter to cartoons of the 1930s, with a jazz soundtrack you’ll be humming well after you’ve put the controller down. The run-and-gun gameplay is solid, too. It’s just so damn hard.

There are no real shortcuts to get past the numerous difficult bosses of Cuphead. You just need to learn their patterns, but then on top of that, develop the muscle memory to perfectly time parries and attacks. There’s a great feeling of accomplishment here if you actually do manage to beat the Devil, but not every gamer will be willing to put in the time to get there.

The post 15 Hardest Nintendo Switch Games of All Time appeared first on Den of Geek.

The Nintendo Switch 2 is right around the corner, and after eight years on the market, it’s hard to call the first Nintendo Switch anything else but a massive success. Sure, it might lack the horsepower of a new Xbox or PlayStation, but the hybrid functionality, innovative feedback of the Joy-Con controllers, and massive library […]

The post 15 Hardest Nintendo Switch Games of All Time appeared first on Den of Geek.

The Nintendo Switch 2 is right around the corner, and after eight years on the market, it’s hard to call the first Nintendo Switch anything else but a massive success. Sure, it might lack the horsepower of a new Xbox or PlayStation, but the hybrid functionality, innovative feedback of the Joy-Con controllers, and massive library of Nintendo classics and third-party ports has made it the preferred console for millions of people around the world. 

There’s a little something for everyone in the Nintendo Switch library, especially if you’re looking for a challenge. Between new games with cranked up difficulty, and old favorites known for their high difficulty that have been ported to the system, these are the 15 hardest Nintendo Switch games.

15. Ikaruga

Originally released for arcades in 2001, time has not made Ikaruga any easier, and the Switch port doesn’t include any modern additions to reduce the difficulty. This is pure bullet hell with a still-innovative polarity system. At any time, you can change the polarity of your ship to white or black and absorb bullets of that color to power up a special attack. But get hit by a bullet of the wrong color, and you’ll lose a ship.

It sounds like a simple concept, but when the bullets start flying, Ikaruga can be frustratingly difficult until you learn all of its patterns. Beating its five stages is still an impressive accomplishment for any gamer, especially if you can do it without losing a life. 

14. Super Mario Maker 2

There are really two games in Super Mario Maker 2. The first is story mode, a challenging, but not terribly difficult collection of levels developed by Nintendo that most Mario veterans will be able to beat after a few days with a fair—but not terribly excessive—number of deaths.

Then there’s the online mode where sadists have gone out of their way to create the most ridiculously difficult platforming levels ever devised, and that less than one percent of players can actually beat in some cases. May God have mercy on your soul if you decide to venture into this mode and actually try to complete some of these levels.

13. Hades

Like any roguelike, difficulty in Hades largely comes down to a combination of practice and luck, but Hades also introduces some quirks that make it one of the more difficult titles in the genre. First, to truly beat the game and see the credits, you’ll have to defeat the final boss not once, not twice, but a whopping 10 times, a feat that will take most players dozens of hours.

But after defeating Hades the first time, you can manually increase the difficulty for extra rewards. Some of these modifiers increase the number of enemies or how bosses attack to the point that initially the developers thought the hardest difficulty was impossible to beat until one player finally managed to pull it off and posted it online.

12. Dark Souls: Remastered

Where would a list about hard games be without an appearance from Dark Souls? The Switch version isn’t drastically different from any of the other versions released since 2011, except you can now die a lot while on the go. This is essentially the same game we’ve been playing since the PS3 era, with all of its sometimes cheap enemies and occasionally confusing level design meant to beat you down.

The only reason Dark Souls ranks low on the list is that by now there are also plenty of guides online that will tell you how to cheese it to power up early and easily beat the most difficult bosses. But if you go into it blind, this is still one of the most difficult games around.

11. Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne HD Remaster

Longtime Shin Megami Tensei players will tell you that the games actually aren’t that difficult. The problem is, that view really only comes from experience. If you go into Shin Megami Tensei III blind, you will almost definitely die a lot, even on normal difficulty. 

Kind of like Dark Souls, there’s just a lot here the game doesn’t tell you about fusing demons and shoring up your party’s weaknesses. Once you get a grasp on the game’s mechanics and are able to properly prepare for battles, it’s not too bad, but most gamers will tell you their first encounter with the series was anything but easy.

10. Dead Cells

Another beloved roguelike, Dead Cells took a lot of cues from Dark Souls, but just moved the action to 2D. With that kind of inspiration, you have a pretty good idea of what the difficulty is going to be like. While it’s an overall fantastic game, what gets frustrating about Dead Cells is just how random and downright unfair it can be.

You’ll get a good run going, and some strong equipment so you can start dominating everything in your path. Then the game will randomly throw out a brand new boss you’ve never seen before who crushes you in about 10 seconds, promptly ending your run.

9. Darkest Dungeon

You know how we said above that Shin Megami Tensei III can at least be beaten with proper planning? Darkest Dungeon takes that one advantage away with its procedurally-generated dungeons. You might think your party is ready for what’s ahead, but if the game throws something way overpowered at you, you’re going to be dead, or maybe worse, insane.

Darkest Dungeon’s most unique feature is its stress level. If your party is stressed by too much darkness, lack of food, or blights from enemies, they’ll stop listening to you, or they might even have a heart attack. Having to deal with the effects of stress makes Darkest Dungeon much more difficult than the typical RPG.

8. Thumper

The developers of Thumper describe it as a “rhythm violence” game. A few minutes of gameplay make it clear what exactly that means. You play as a space beetle flying along a track, trying to keep rhythm with the music, while also dodging obstacles and defeating enemies.

Like many great rhythm games, Thumper’s difficulty starts out reasonably paced, but each level number corresponds with a time signature, and the later levels get so extreme that even the most seasoned veterans of other rhythm titles will have trouble keeping up.

7. Baba is You

Baba is You remains a wholly unique puzzle game that will make you question your intelligence over the course of more than 400 levels. In each one screen stage, you’re confronted with several word tiles you need to arrange in order to reach the goal. That can start off as simple as arranging the term “flag is win,” but the difficulty quickly spirals.

Once you dive further into the game, it’s easy to fall into terms that will quickly break a level by changing the nature of your character, or the world itself. And the purpose of words in later levels gets much vaguer, resulting in an experience that can be more frustrating than fun.

6. Donkey Kong Country Returns HD

Donkey Kong Country Returns HD is technically the newest release to make it onto the list since it just came out in January of this year, but it’s also a port of a 2010 Wii game, making it one of the older games on this list. The difficulty also depends quite a bit on which mode you choose to play. Modern mode allows for Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong to share six hearts between them, and there are plenty of power ups available, making it a challenging, but not impossible game to get through.

But if you play in classic mode, you’re in for a rough time. With only four hearts between the Kongs, and fewer power ups, Donkey Kong Country Returns’ numerous mine cart and barrel levels will test all of your platforming skills, and not everyone will make it to the credits.

5. Metroid Dread

While Metroid Dread received an update with an easier difficulty mode after release, it initially shipped with only a normal and hard difficulty selectable, and even normal difficulty was pretty damn hard. Much of the challenge comes from the changes to the classic Metroid formula. In tense stealth sections, Samus faces the new EMMI robot enemies, initially with no way of defeating them, and only a brief window to escape when they catch her. Those parts of the game, which sometimes involve complex control combinations, can be tough, even when you acquire a weapon to take down these deadly enemies.

Then there are the tricky boss fights, which forced many gamers to give up before the final cutscene. In particular, the final boss, a demanding three-stage fight that requires almost perfect timing to overcome, may be the most difficult in the entire franchise.

4. Super Meat Boy 

Super Meat Boy is another title that was originally released elsewhere long before its Switch debut, but that still hasn’t been watered down for casual tastes. Super Meat Boy has some of the tightest platforming controls around, but that doesn’t do anything to ease the difficulty.

In each of its more than 300 levels, there are just so many obstacles that need to be so precisely evaded, it takes real skills to see the game through to the end. While the game gets really freaking hard in the later levels, it’s just addicting enough that you’ll likely do everything you can to see the finale.

3. Celeste

Celeste is another ultra-difficult platform in the same vein as Super Meat Boy. The game requires absolute mastery of its jumping, dashing, and climbing mechanics if you plan to see it to the end, but don’t expect that to be a quick journey. It’s not uncommon to see posts on forums about players dying hundreds of times on a single level.

Celeste does feature a highly customizable “assist mode” that can provide you with lowered game speed, unlimited dashes, or even invincibility, but without that it’s a real chore to get through the challenging B-side and C-side levels, or gather all the game’s collectibles.

2. Hollow Knight

Hollow Knight has a wonderfully weird graphical style illustrating its subterranean insectoid world that no doubt lured many unsuspecting gamers in. While a traditional Metroidvania at its core, every part of this game’s difficulty is cranked up to the max. The dozens of tough bosses can end you quickly, and even a tough run in with a group of regular enemies might take you out.

The most frustrating thing about Hollow Knight (though admittedly this feature has its fans as well) is that there’s so little direction about where to go next, it’s very easy to go down a path you’re not yet equipped to handle, and have all of your progress wiped out in an instant.

1. Cuphead 

First off, let us just say that we absolutely love Cuphead’s aesthetic. The game is a beautifully animated love letter to cartoons of the 1930s, with a jazz soundtrack you’ll be humming well after you’ve put the controller down. The run-and-gun gameplay is solid, too. It’s just so damn hard.

There are no real shortcuts to get past the numerous difficult bosses of Cuphead. You just need to learn their patterns, but then on top of that, develop the muscle memory to perfectly time parries and attacks. There’s a great feeling of accomplishment here if you actually do manage to beat the Devil, but not every gamer will be willing to put in the time to get there.

The post 15 Hardest Nintendo Switch Games of All Time appeared first on Den of Geek.

We concur that computer-generated eyes had make excellent personas, but not for the purpose you might think. Ironically, the website highlights the core issue of this very common design method: the person ( a ) does not exist. Personas are deliberately created, much like in the pictures. Knowledge is combined into a sporadic, unreliable snapshot that is taken out of context.

But strangely enough, manufacturers use personalities to encourage their style for the real world.

A step up, personalities

Most manufacturers have at least once in their careers created, used, or encountered personalities. In their content” Personas- A Plain Introduction”, the Interaction Design Foundation defines profile as “fictional characters, which you create based upon your study in order to reflect the unique user types that might use your service, product, site, or brand”. Personas typically consist of a name, profile picture, quotes, demographics, goals, needs, behavior in relation to a particular service/product, emotions, and motivations ( for example, see Creative Companion’s Persona Core Poster ). According to design firm Designit, the goal of personas is to “make the research relateable, ]and ] easy to communicate, digest, reference, and apply to product and service development.”

The decontextualization of identities

People are well-known because they make “dry” study information relevant and more people. However, this approach places a cap on the study’s data analysis, making it impossible for the investigated users to be excluded from their particular contexts. As a result, personalities don’t describe important factors that make you realize their decision-making method or allow you to connect to users ‘ thoughts and behavior, they lack stories. You are aware of the persona’s actions, but you lack the knowledge to know why. You end up with less human-like user images.

This “decontextualization” we see in identities happens in four way, which we’ll discuss below.

People are assumed to be stable, according to people.

Here’s a painfully obvious truth: people are not a fixed set of characteristics, despite the fact that many businesses still try to recruit and retain their employees and customers using outdated personality tests ( referring to you, Myers-Briggs ). You act, think, and feel different according to the situations you experience. You may behave helpful to some people, or you might act rude to others because you appear distinct to different people. And you constantly change your mind regarding the selections you’ve made.

Modern psychology agree that while persons usually behave according to certain styles, it’s actually a combination of history and culture that determines how people act and take decisions. The type of person you are in each particular moment depends on the context, the impact of other people, your mood, and the overall history that led to the situation.

Personas do not account for this variation in their attempt to reduce reality; instead, they present a consumer as a set of features. Like personality tests, personas seize people away from real existence. Even worse, individuals are labeled as” that kind of guy” with no means to practice their inherent mobility. This behavior lowers diversity, reinforces stereotypes, and doesn’t reveal reality.

Personas rely on people, not the environment

In the real world, you’re creating content for a situation, not an entity. There are economic, political, and social factors to consider when a man lives in a home, a community, or an ecosystem. A pattern is not meant for a single customer. Instead, you create a layout for one or more specific situations where a certain product might be used by a large number of people. But, personas don’t explicitly explain how a person feels about the environment, rather than show the user.

Do you usually make the same decision over and over again? Despite your pledge to eat vegan, you may still choose to purchase some meat when your family visit. Your decisions, including your behavior, opinions, and statements, are not only completely accurate but very situational because they vary with various circumstances and variables. The image that “represents” you wouldn’t take into account this interdependence, because it doesn’t explain the grounds of your choices. It doesn’t offer a explanation for why you act in the way you do. People practice the well-known attribution error, which states that they too often attribute others ‘ behavior to their personalities and not to the circumstances.

As mentioned by the Interaction Design Foundation, identities are often placed in a situation that’s a” specific environment with a problem they want to or have to solve “—does that mean environment actually is considered? However, what frequently occurs is that you choose a fictional personality to handle a particular circumstance based on the fiction. How could you probably realize how someone you want to represent behave in new circumstances if you hadn’t even thoroughly investigated and understood the existing context of the people you want to represent?

Personas are irrelevant statistics

A image is depicted as a certain person in Shlomo Goltz’s introduction to Smashing Magazine, according to Shlomo Goltz’s introduction article. It is instead made up of observations from numerous people. The famous USA Air Force design planes were designed based on the average of 140 of their aircraft ‘ real dimensions, with never a single pilot actually fit within that regular seat, is a well-known criticism of this element of personalities.

The same requirement applies to emotional components of people. Have you ever heard a prominent man say something like,” They took what I said out of perspective!” I didn’t mean it that way when they used my thoughts. The person’s statement was reported actually, but the writer failed to explain the framework around the declaration and didn’t explain the non-verbal expressions. In the end, the expected significance was lost. You do the same when you create personas: you collect someone’s statement ( or goal, or need, or emotion ), whose meaning can only be understood if you give its own particular context, and then report it as an isolated finding.

But personalities go a stage further, extracting a decontextualized locating and joining it with another decontextualized getting from someone else. The resultant set of findings frequently lacks clarity and yet contrast because it lacks the fundamental justifications for and how that getting came about. It lacks any significance. And the persona doesn’t give you the full background of the person ( s ) to uncover this meaning: you would need to dive into the raw data for each single persona item to find it. What then is the persona’s effectiveness?

The validity of personalities can be deceiving.

To a certain extent, developers realize that a image is a dead common. Designers create “relatable” personalities to make them appear like real people in order to beat this. Nothing better explains the absurdity of this than the Interaction Design Foundation’s phrase,” Put a couple imaginary personal details to make the persona a genuine character.” In other words, you add non-realism in an attempt to create more realism. Wouldn’t it be much more responsible to emphasize that John is only an abstraction while deliberately obscuring the fact that” John Doe” is an abstract representation of research findings? Let’s say something is artificial, and let’s say it’s that.

It’s the finishing touch of a persona’s decontextualization: after having assumed that people’s personalities are fixed, dismissed the importance of their environment, and hidden meaning by joining isolated, non-generalizable findings, designers invent new context to create ( their own ) meaning. They do so by introducing a number of biases, as with everything they create. As Designit put it, as designers, we can” contextualize]the persona ] based on our reality and experience. We create connections that are familiar to us“. With each new detail added, this practice furthers stereotypes, doesn’t reflect real-world diversity, and takes people’s actual reality even further.

To conduct effective design research, we must report the “as-is” reality and make it relatable for our audience so that everyone can use their own empathy and formula for their own interpretation and emotional response.

Dynamic Selves: The alternative to personas

What should we do instead of using personas?

Designit suggested utilizing mindsets rather than personas. Each Mindset is a” spectrum of attitudes and emotional responses that different people have within the same context or life experience”. It challenges designers to avoid getting fixated on just one person’s way of being. Unfortunately, despite being a step in the right direction, this proposal doesn’t consider that people are a part of a system that controls their behavior, personality, and, yes, mindset. Therefore, Mindsets are also not absolute but change in regard to the situation. What determines a certain Mindset, remains to be seen.

Another option is provided by Margaret P., the author of the article” Kill Your Personas,” who has argued for replacing personas with persona spectrums that include a range of user abilities. For example, a visual impairment could be permanent ( blindness ), temporary ( recovery from eye surgery ), or situational (screen glare ). Because they are based on the idea that the context is the pattern, not the personality ,ersona spectrums are very useful for more inclusive and context-based design. However, their only drawback is that they have a very functional perspective on users that misses the relatability of a real person taken from within a spectrum.

In developing an alternative to personas, we aim to transform the standard design process to be context-based. Similar to how we tried to do this before with people, contexts are generalizable and have patterns that we can identify. How can we identify these patterns, then? How do we ensure truly context-based design?

Understand real people in a variety of contexts

Nothing about reality can be more relatable and inspiring. Therefore, we have to understand real individuals in their multi-faceted contexts, and use this understanding to fuel our design. This approach is known as Dynamic Selves.

Let’s take a look at how the approach looks based on an illustration of how one of us used it in a recent study that examined Italians ‘ habits around energy consumption. We drafted a design research plan aimed at investigating people’s attitudes toward energy consumption and sustainable behavior, with a focus on smart thermostats.

1. Select the appropriate sample.

When we argue against personas, we’re often challenged with quotes such as” Where are you going to find a single person that encapsulates all the information from one of these advanced personas]? ]” The simple answer is that you are not required to. Your insights need not be extensive and meaningful, as you don’t need to know much about everyone.

In qualitative research, validity does not derive from quantity but from accurate sampling. You choose the individuals who best fit the “population” you’re designing for. If this sample is chosen wisely and you have a deep understanding of the sampled people, you can infer how the rest of the population thinks and acts. There’s no need to study seven Susans and five Yuriys, one of each will do.

In the same way, you don’t need to comprehend Susan in fifteen different ways. Once you’ve seen her in a few different settings, you’ve grasped Susan’s general scheme of action. Not Susan as an atomic being but Susan in relation to the surrounding environment: how she might act, feel, and think in different situations.

It becomes clear why each person should be portrayed as an individual because each already represents an abstraction of a larger group of people in similar circumstances because each person is representative of a portion of the total population you’re researching. You don’t want to see abstractions of abstractions! These selected people need to be understood and shown in their full expression, remaining in their microcosmos—and if you want to identify patterns you can focus on identifying patterns in contexts.

However, the question persists: how do you choose a representative sample? First, you must consider the target market for the product or service you are designing. It might be helpful to examine the company’s objectives and strategy, the current customer base, and/or a potential future target audience.

In our example project, we were designing an application for those who own a smart thermostat. Everyone in their home could have a smart thermostat in the future. However, only early adopters currently own one. To build a significant sample, we needed to understand the reason why these early adopters became such. We then recruited by enticing people to explain why and how they obtained a smart thermostat. There were those who had made the decision to purchase it, those who had been influenced by other people’s decisions, and those who had discovered it in their homes. So we selected representatives of these three situations, from different age groups and geographical locations, with an equal balance of tech savvy and non-tech savvy participants.

2. Conduct your research

After having chosen and recruited your sample, conduct your research using ethnographic methodologies. This will give you more examples and anecdotes to enrich your qualitative data. Given COVID-19 restrictions, we turned an internal ethnographic research project into home-based remote family interviews that were followed by diary research in our example project.

To gain an in-depth understanding of attitudes and decision-making trade-offs, the research focus was not limited to the interviewee alone but deliberately included the whole family. Each interviewee would provide a story that would then become much more interesting and precise with the additions made by their spouses, husbands, kids, or occasionally even pets. We also paid attention to the behaviors that came from having relationships with other important people ( such as coworkers or distant relatives ), as well as the relationships that came into being with them. This wide research focus allowed us to shape a vivid mental image of dynamic situations with multiple actors.

It is crucial that the research’s scope remain broad enough to cover all potential actors. Therefore, it typically works best to define broad research areas with broad questions. Interviews are best set up in a semi-structured way, where follow-up questions will dive into topics mentioned spontaneously by the interviewee. This “plan to be surprised” will allow for the most enlightening findings. One of our participants responded to our question about how his family controlled the house temperature by saying,” My wife has not installed the thermostat’s app; she uses WhatsApp instead. If she wants to turn on the heater and she is not home, she will text me. I serve as her thermostat.

3. Analysis: Create the Dynamic Selves

You begin to represent each individual with several Dynamic Selves, each” Self” representing one of the circumstances you have examined throughout the research analysis. A quote serves as the foundation of each Dynamic Self, which is supported by a photo and a few relevant demographics that serve as examples of the larger picture. The research findings themselves will show which demographics are relevant to show. The important demographics were family type, number and type of houses owned, economic status, and technological maturity in our case because our research focused on families and their way of life to understand their needs for thermal regulation. To facilitate the stakeholders ‘ transition from personas and be able to connect multiple actions and contexts to the same person, we also included the individual’s name and age, but they are optional.

To capture exact quotes, interviews need to be video-recorded and notes need to be taken verbatim as much as possible. This is crucial to the completeness of each participant’s various selves. Photos of the setting and anonymized actors are necessary to create authentic selves in ethnographic research conducted in real life. Ideally, these photos should come directly from field research, but an evocative and representative image will work, too, as long as it’s realistic and depicts meaningful actions that you associate with your participants. One of our interviewees, for instance, shared a story of his mountain home where he used to spend weekends with his family. Therefore, we depicted him taking a hike with his young daughter.

At the end of the research analysis, we displayed all of the Selves ‘” cards” on a single canvas, categorized by activities. Each card featured a situation with a quote and a distinctive image. Each participant had a different deck full of self-assessments.

4. Identify potential designs

You will start to notice patterns once you have taken all of the main quotes from the interview transcripts and diaries and written them down as self-cards. These patterns will highlight the opportunity areas for new product creation, new functionalities, and new services—for new design.

There was a particularly intriguing insight around the concept of humidity in our example project. We became aware of the importance of monitoring humidity for health and that people don’t know what it is because an environment that’s too dry or wet can cause respiratory problems or worsen already existing ones. This highlighted a big opportunity for our client to educate users on this concept and become a health advisor.

Benefits of Dynamic Selves

When you conduct your research using the Dynamic Selves method, you start to notice peculiar social relations, peculiar circumstances that people face and the consequences of their actions, and that people are surrounded by ever-changing environments. In our thermostat project, we have come to know one of the participants, Davide, as a boyfriend, dog-lover, and tech enthusiast.

Davide is a person we might have once consigned to the persona of a “tech enthusiast.” However, there are also those who are wealthy or poor, who are tech enthusiasts and have families or are single. Their motivations and priorities when deciding to purchase a new thermostat can be opposite according to these different frames.

You can then generalize how Davide would act in a different situation once you have understood him in more detail and have fully grasped the underlying causes of his behavior for each circumstance. You can infer what he would think and do in the circumstances ( or scenarios ) you design for using your understanding of him.

The Dynamic Selves approach aims to dismiss the conflicted dual purpose of personas—to summarize and empathize at the same time—by separating your research summary from the people you’re seeking to empathize with. This is crucial because scale affects how we feel about people and how difficult it is to feel empathy for others. We have the deepest compassion for people with whom we can directly relate.

If you take a real person as inspiration for your design, you no longer need to create an artificial character. No more developing plot devices to “realize” the character, and no more need for additional bias. Simply put, this person is in real life. In fact, in our experience, personas quickly become nothing more than a name in our priority guides and prototype screens, as we all know that these characters don’t really exist.

Another significant benefit of the Dynamic Selves approach is that it raises the stakes of your work: if you ruin your design, someone you and the team know and have met will suffer the consequences. It might prompt you to check your designs every day and might prevent you from making shortcuts.

And finally, real people in their specific contexts are a better basis for anecdotal storytelling and therefore are more effective in persuasion. To obtain this result, it is crucial to document real research. It reinforces your design arguments with more urgency and weight:” When I met Alessandra, the conditions of her workplace struck me. Noise, bad ergonomics, lack of light, you name it. I’m worried that her life will become more complicated if we choose to use this functionality.

Conclusion

In their article on Mindsets, Designit mentioned that “design thinking tools provide a shortcut to deal with reality’s complexities, but this process of simplification can occasionally flatten out people’s lives into a few general characteristics.” Unfortunately, personas have been culprits in a crime of oversimplification. They fail to account for the complex nature of our users ‘ decision-making processes and don’t take into account the fact that people are immersed in environments.

Design needs to be simplified, not necessarily generalized. You have to look at the research elements that stand out: the sentences that captured your attention, the images that struck you, the sounds that linger. Use those as metaphors for the person in all of their contexts. People and insights are subject to a context, but they cannot be removed because it would detract from the context’s meaning.

It’s high time for design to move away from fiction, and embrace reality—in its messy, surprising, and unquantifiable beauty—as our guide and inspiration.

” Any feedback?” is perhaps one of the worst ways to ask for opinions. It’s obscure and unfocused, and it doesn’t give a clear picture of what we’re looking for. Great comments begins sooner than we might anticipate: it begins with the demand.

It might seem contradictory to start the process of receiving feedback with a problem, but that makes sense if we realize that getting feedback can be thought of as a form of design study. The best way to ask for feedback is to write down some insightful questions, just like we wouldn’t do any studies without the right questions to obtain the insight we need.

Design analysis is not a one-time procedure. Sure, any great comments process continues until the project is finished, but this is especially true for layout because architecture work continues iteration after iteration, from a high level to the finest details. Each stage requires its unique set of questions.

Lastly, we need to review what we received, get to the heart of its conclusions, and take action, like with any good research. Problem, generation, and evaluation. Let’s take a closer look at each of those.

The query

Being available to input is important, but we need to be specific about what we’re looking for. Any comments,” What do you think,” or” I’d love to hear your mind” at the end of a presentation are likely to garner a lot of different ideas, or worse, to make people follow the lead of the first speaker. And finally, we become irritated because ambiguous queries like those can result in people leaving reviews that don’t even consider keys. Which might be a savory matter, so it might be hard at that point to divert the crew to the topics that you had wanted to focus on.

How do we enter this circumstance, though? It’s a combination of various components. One is that we don’t often consider asking as a part of the input method. Another is how healthy it is to keep the issue open and assume that everyone else will agree. Another is that there’s frequently no need to be that specific in nonprofessional conversations. In short, we tend to underestimate the importance of the concerns, so we don’t work on improving them.

The practice of asking nice questions guidelines and concentrates the criticism. It also serves as a form of acceptance, outlining your willingness to make comments and the types of responses you want to receive. It puts people in the right emotional state, especially in situations when they weren’t expecting to give opinions.

There isn’t a second best method to request comments. It simply needs to be certain, and precision may take a variety of forms. A design for design critique that I’ve found especially helpful in my training is the one of stage over depth.

The term” level” refers to each stage of the process, which is, in our case, the design phase. The type of input changes as the customer research moves on to the final design. But within a single stage, one might also examine whether some assumptions are correct and whether there’s been a suitable language of the amassed input into updated designs as the job has evolved. The levels of consumer experience could serve as a starting point for possible questions. What are the project targets, in your opinion? User requirements? Funnality? Material? Contact design? Data infrastructure Interface style Navigation style? Visual layout Brand?

Here’re a some example questions that are specific and to the place that refer to different levels:

• Functionality: Is it attractive to automate accounts creation?
• Contact design: Please review the updated movement and let me know if there are any steps or error points I may have missed.
• Information infrastructure: We have two competing bits of information on this site. Does the construction make a good communication between them?
• User interface design: What do you think about the top-of-the-page problem counter, which makes sure you can see the future error even when the error is outside the viewport?
• Navigation style: From study, we identified these second-level routing items, but when you’re on the webpage, the list feels overly long and hard to understand. Do you have any ideas for how to handle this?
• Are the thick alerts in the bottom-right corner of the page obvious enough?

The another plane of sensitivity is about how heavy you’d like to go on what’s being presented. For instance, we may have introduced a new end-to-end movement, but you might want to know more about a particular viewpoint you found challenging. This can be particularly helpful from one generation to the next when it’s crucial to identify the areas that have changed.

There are other issues that we can consider when we want to accomplish more specific—and more effective—questions.

Eliminating generic finals from your questions like “good,” “well,” “nice,” “bad,” “okay,” and” cool” is a simple strategy. Asking,” When the stop opens and the switches appear, is this conversation great, for instance?” may seem precise, but you can place the “good” tournament, and transfer it to an even better query:” When the wall opens and the buttons appear, is it clear what the next action is”?

Sometimes, we do need a lot of feedback. Although that is uncommon, it is possible. In that sense, you might still make it explicit that you’re looking for a wide range of opinions, whether at a high level or with details. Or perhaps you should just say,” At first glance, what do you think”? so that after someone’s first five seconds of viewing it, it becomes obvious that what you’re asking is open ended but focused on the subject.

Sometimes the project is particularly expansive, and some areas may have already been explored in detail. In these circumstances, it might be helpful to state explicitly that some parts are already locked in and aren’t accessible for feedback. Although it’s not something I’d recommend in general, I’ve found it helpful in avoiding getting back into rabbit holes like those that could lead to even more refinement if what’s important right now isn’t.

Asking specific questions can completely change the quality of the feedback that you receive. People with less refined criticism will now be able to provide more actionable feedback, and even expert designers will appreciate the clarity and effectiveness gained from concentrating solely on what’s needed. It can save a lot of time and frustration.

The iteration

Design iterations are probably the most recognizable component of the design process, and they act as a natural checkpoint for feedback. Many design tools have inline commenting, but many of those methods typically display changes as a single fluid stream in the same file. These methods cause conversations to vanish once they’re resolved, update shared UI components automatically, and require designs to always display the most recent version unless these would-be useful features were manually turned off. The implied goal that these design tools seem to have is to arrive at just one final copy with all discussions closed, probably because they inherited patterns from how written documents are collaboratively edited. That approach to design critiques is probably not the best approach, but some teams might benefit from it even if I don’t want to be too prescriptive.

Create explicit checkpoints for discussion is the asynchronous design-critique strategy that I find to be most successful. I’m going to use the term iteration post for this. It refers to a write-up or presentation of the design iteration that is followed by a discussion thread of some kind. This can be used on any platform that can accommodate this structure. By the way, when I refer to a “write-up or presentation“, I’m including video recordings or other media too: as long as it’s asynchronous, it works.

There are many benefits to using iteration posts:

It establishes a rhythm in the design process, allowing the designer to review the feedback from each iteration and get ready for the following.
• It makes decisions visible for future review, and conversations are likewise always available.
• It keeps track of how the design evolved over time.
• It might also make it simpler to collect and act on feedback depending on the tool.

These posts of course don’t mean that no other feedback approach should be used, just that iteration posts could be the primary rhythm for a remote design team to use. And from there, other feedback techniques ( such as live critique, pair designing, or inline comments ) can emerge.

There isn’t, in my opinion, a universal format for iteration posts. But there are a few high-level elements that make sense to include as a baseline:

1. The objective is to achieve
2. The layout
3. The list of changes
4. The querys

Each project is likely to have a goal, and it should most likely be one that has already been summarized in one sentence elsewhere, such as the client brief, the product manager’s outline, or the request of the project owner. So this is something that I’d repeat in every iteration post—literally copy and pasting it. The goal is to provide context and repeat what is necessary to complete each iteration post so that there is no need to search for information in different posts. The most recent iteration post will have everything I need if I want to know about the most recent design.

This copy-and-paste part introduces another relevant concept: alignment comes from repetition. Therefore, repeating information in posts helps to ensure that everyone is on the same page.

The actual series of information-architecture outlines, diagrams, flows, maps, wireframes, screens, visuals, and any other design work that has been done is what the design is then called. In short, it’s any design artifact. In the final stages of the project, I prefer the term “blank” to indicate that I’ll be displaying complete flows rather than individual screens to make it simpler to comprehend the larger picture.

It might also be helpful to have clear names on the artifacts so that it is easier to refer to them. Write the post in a way that helps people understand the work. It’s not much different from creating a strong live presentation.

For a successful discussion, you should also include a bullet list of the changes made in the previous iteration to help people concentrate on what’s changed. This can be especially useful for larger pieces of work where keeping track, iteration after iteration, may prove difficult.

And finally, as noted earlier, it’s essential that you include a list of the questions to drive the design critique in the direction you want. Making a numbered list of questions available in the form of a number can also make it simpler to refer to each one by its name.

Not every iteration is the same. Earlier iterations don’t need to be as tightly focused—they can be more exploratory and experimental, maybe even breaking some of the design-language guidelines to see what’s possible. Then, later, the iterations begin coming to a decision and improving it until the design process is complete and the feature is ready.

Even if these iterations posts are written and intended as checkpoints, they are not required to be exhaustive. A post might be a draft—just a concept to get a conversation going—or it could be a cumulative list of each feature that was added over the course of each iteration until the full picture is done.

I eventually started using particular labels for incremental iterations, such as i1, i2, i3, and so on. Although this may seem like a minor labeling tip, it can be useful in many ways:

• Unique—It’s a clear unique marker. Everyone knows where to go to review things, and it’s simple to say” This was discussed in i4″ with each project.
• Unassuming—Versions of the same thing ( such as v1, v2, and v3 ) give the impression of something enormous, exhaustive, and complete. Iterations must be able to be exploratory, incomplete, partial.
• Future proof—It resolves the “final” naming issue that you might encounter with variations. No more files with the title “final final complete no-really-its-done” Within each project, the largest number always represents the latest iteration.

The wording release candidate (RC ) could be used to indicate when a design is finished enough to be worked on, even if there are some bits that still need work and, in turn, need more iterations:” with i8 we reached RC” or “i12 is an RC” to illustrate this.

The evaluation

What usually happens during a design critique is an open discussion, with a back and forth between people that can be very productive. This strategy is particularly successful when synchronous feedback is being received live. However, when we work asynchronously, it is more effective to adopt a different strategy: we can adopt a user-research mindset. Written feedback from teammates, stakeholders, or others can be treated as if it were the result of user interviews and surveys, and we can analyze it accordingly.

Asynchronous feedback is particularly effective because of this shift, especially around these friction points:

It lessens the need to respond to everyone.
1. It reduces the frustration from swoop-by comments.
2. It lessens our personal stakes.

The first friction is being forced to respond to every comment. Sometimes we write the iteration post, and we get replies from our team. It’s just a few of them, it’s simple, and there isn’t much to worry about. However, there may be times when some solutions may require more in-depth discussions and the number of replies may quickly rise, which can create tension between trying to be a good team player by responding to everyone and attempting the next design iteration. This might be especially true if the person who’s replying is a stakeholder or someone directly involved in the project who we feel that we need to listen to. We must come to terms with the fact that this pressure is perfectly normal and that it’s human nature to try to accommodate those we care about. Responding to all comments at times can be effective, but when we consider a design critique more like user research, we realize that we don’t need to respond to every comment, and there are alternatives in asynchronous spaces:

One is to let the next iteration speak for itself. When the design changes and we publish a follow-up iteration, that’s the response. You could tag everyone in the previous discussion, but even that is a choice, not a requirement.
• Another is to briefly reply to acknowledge each comment, such as” Understood. Thank you,”” Good points— I’ll review,” or” Thanks. These will be included in the upcoming iteration. In some cases, this could also be just a single top-level comment along the lines of” Thanks for all the feedback everyone—the next iteration is coming soon”!
• Another option is to quickly summarize the comments before moving on. This may be particularly helpful if your workflow allows you to create a simplified checklist that you can use for the following iteration.

The second friction point is the swoop-by comment, which is the kind of feedback that comes from someone outside the project or team who might not be aware of the context, restrictions, decisions, or requirements —or of the previous iterations ‘ discussions. One can hope that they will learn something from them, starting with acknowledging that they are doing this and making their location more explicit. It can be annoying to have to repeat the same response repeatedly in swoop-by comments.

Let’s begin by acknowledging again that there’s no need to reply to every comment. However, if responding to a previously litigated point might be helpful, a brief response with a link to the previous discussion for additional information is typically sufficient. Remember that repetition results in alignment, so it’s acceptable to repeat things occasionally!

Swoop-by commenting can still be useful for two reasons: they might point out something that still isn’t clear, and they also have the potential to stand in for the point of view of a user who’s seeing the design for the first time. Yes, you’ll still be frustrated, but that might at least make things better for you.

The personal stake we might have in the design could be the third friction point, which might cause us to feel defensive if the review turned into a discussion. Treating feedback as user research helps us create a healthy distance between the people giving us feedback and our ego ( because yes, even if we don’t want to admit it, it’s there ). And in the end, presenting everything in aggregated form helps us to prioritize our work more.

Remember to always remember that you don’t have to accept every piece of feedback, even though you need to listen to stakeholders, project owners, and specific advice. You have to analyze it and make a decision that you can justify, but sometimes “no” is the right answer.

You are in charge of making that choice as the designer who is in charge of the project. In the end, everyone has their area of expertise, and as a designer, you are the one with the most background and knowledge to make the right choice. And by listening to the feedback that you’ve received, you’re making sure that it’s also the best and most balanced decision.

Thanks to Mike Shelton and Brie Anne Demkiw for their contributions to the initial draft of this article.

One of the most successful soft knowledge we have at our disposal is the ability to work together to improve our patterns while developing our own abilities and opinions, in whatever form it takes, and whatever it may be called.

Feedback is also one of the most underestimated equipment, and generally by assuming that we’re now great at it, we settle, forgetting that it’s a skill that can be trained, grown, and improved. Bad feedback can cause conflict in jobs, lower motivation, and negatively impact faith and teamwork over the long term. A revolutionary force may be quality feedback.

Practicing our knowledge is absolutely a good way to enhance, but the learning gets yet faster when it’s paired with a good base that programs and focuses the exercise. What are some fundamental components of providing effective opinions? And how can suggestions be changed for isolated and distributed workplaces?

On the web, we may discover a long history of sequential suggestions: from the early weeks of open source, script was shared and discussed on email addresses. Developers and sprint masters discuss draw requests, designers make comments on their favourite design tools, and other things.

Design analysis is frequently referred to as a form of collaborative feedback that is used to improve our work. So it shares a lot of the rules with comments in public, but it also has some variations.

The information

The content of the feedback serves as the foundation for every effective analysis, so we need to start there. There are many versions that you can use to design your content. This one from Lara Hogan is the one I personally like best because it’s obvious and actionable.

This calculation, which is typically used to provide feedback to users, even fits really well in a design critique because it finally addresses one of the main issues that we address: What? Where? Why? How? Imagine that you’re giving some comments about some pattern function that spans several screens, like an onboard movement: there are some pages shown, a flow blueprint, and an outline of the decisions made. You notice something that needs to be improved. You’ll have a mental model that can help you be more precise and effective if you keep the three components of the equation in mind.

Here is a comment that could be given as a part of some feedback, and it might look reasonable at a first glance: it seems to superficially fulfill the elements in the equation. But does it exist?

Not sure about the hierarchy and styles of the buttons; it seems off. Can you change them?

Observation for design feedback also refers to providing a perspective that is as specific as possible, not just by pointing out which portion of the interface your feedback refers to. Do you offer the user’s viewpoint? Your expert perspective? From a business perspective? The perspective of the project manager A first-time user’s perspective?

When I see these two buttons, I anticipate one to go forward and the other to go back.

Impact is about the why. Just pointing out a UI element might sometimes be enough if the issue may be obvious, but more often than not, you should add an explanation of what you’re pointing out.

When I see these two buttons, I anticipate one to go forward and the other to go back. But this is the only screen where this happens, as before we just used a single button and an “×” to close. This seems to be breaking the consistency in the flow.

The question approach is intended to give open guidance by encouraging the designer to think critically while receiving the feedback. Notably, Lara’s equation includes a second approach: request, which instead provides instructions on how to find a particular solution. While that’s a viable option for feedback in general, for design critiques, in my experience, defaulting to the question approach usually reaches the best solutions because designers are generally more comfortable in being given an open space to explore.

For the question approach, the difference between the two can be demonstrated as an illustration:

When I see these two buttons, I anticipate one to go forward and the other to go back. But this is the only screen where this happens, as before we just used a single button and an “×” to close. This seems to be breaking the consistency in the flow. Would it make sense to unify them?

Or, for the request approach:

When I see these two buttons, I anticipate one to go forward and the other to go back. But this is the only screen where this happens, as before we just used a single button and an “×” to close. This seems to be breaking the consistency in the flow. Let’s make sure that all screens have the same pair of forward and back buttons.

In some situations, adding an additional reason why you think the suggestion is better might be helpful at this point.

When I see these two buttons, I anticipate one to go forward and the other to go back. But this is the only screen where this happens, as before we just used a single button and an “×” to close. This seems to be breaking the consistency in the flow. Let’s make sure that all screens have the same two forward and back buttons so that users don’t get confused.

Choosing between the request and question approaches can occasionally be a matter of personal preference. I did rounds of anonymous feedback and reviewed feedback with other people before putting a lot of effort into improving it a while ago. After a few rounds of this work and a year later, I got a positive response: my feedback came across as effective and grounded. until I switched teams. Quite unexpected, my next round of criticism from one particular person wasn’t very positive. The reason is that I had previously tried not to be prescriptive in my advice—because the people who I was previously working with preferred the open-ended question format over the request style of suggestions. However, there was a member of this other team who preferred specific guidance. So I changed my feedback so that it included requests.

One comment that I heard come up a few times is that this kind of feedback is quite long, and it doesn’t seem very efficient. Yes, but no. Let’s look at both sides.

No, this style of feedback is actually efficient because the length here is a byproduct of clarity, and spending time giving this kind of feedback can provide exactly enough information for a good fix. Additionally, if we zoom out, it may lessen misunderstandings and back-and-forth conversations in the future, boosting overall collaboration’s effectiveness and efficiency beyond the single comment. Consider the example above where the feedback would be simply,” Let’s make sure that all screens have the same two forward and back buttons.” The designer receiving this feedback wouldn’t have much to go by, so they might just apply the change. The interface might change in later iterations or new features might be introduced, and perhaps the change won’t make sense anymore. The designer might assume that the change is about consistency without the explanation, but what if it wasn’t? So there could now be an underlying concern that changing the buttons would be perceived as a regression.

Yes, this type of feedback is not always effective because some comments don’t always need to be thorough, some times because some changes may be obvious ( the font used doesn’t follow our guidelines ), and others because the team may have a lot of internal knowledge, making some of the whys may be implied.

The equation above is not intended to provide a predetermined template for feedback, but rather a mnemonic to reflect and enhance the practice. Even after years of active work on my critiques, I still from time to time go back to this formula and reflect on whether what I just wrote is effective.

The atmosphere

The foundation of feedback is well-rounded content, but that’s not really enough. The soft skills of the person who’s providing the critique can multiply the likelihood that the feedback will be well received and understood. It has been demonstrated that only positive feedback can lead to sustained change in people. It can be determined by tone alone whether content is rejected or welcomed.

Tone is crucial to work on because our goal is to be understood and to have a positive working environment. Over the years, I’ve tried to summarize the required soft skills in a formula that mirrors the one for content: the receptivity equation.

Respectful feedback comes across as logical, solid, and constructive. It’s the kind of feedback that is viewed as useful and fair, regardless of whether it’s positive or negative.

Timing refers to when the feedback happens. If given at the wrong time, to-the-point feedback has little chance of being well received. If a new feature’s entire high-level information architecture is about to go live when it’s about to be released, it might still be relevant if that questioning raises a significant blocker that no one saw, but those concerns are much more likely to have to wait for a later revision. So in general, attune your feedback to the stage of the project. Iteration in the morning? Iteration later? Polishing work in progress? Each of these has unique needs. Your feedback will be received favorably if the right timing is chosen.

Attitude is the equivalent of intent, and in the context of person-to-person feedback, it can be referred to as radical candor. Before writing, it’s important to make sure the person we’re writing will actually benefit them and improve the overall project. Sometimes it might be difficult to reflect on this because we might not want to admit that we don’t really appreciate that person. Hopefully that’s not the case, but that can happen, and that’s okay. How would I write if I really cared about them, aside from acknowledging and having that to help you make up for it? How can I stop acting aggressively? How can I be more constructive?

Form is important especially in diverse and cross-cultural workplaces because having excellent writing, perfect timing, and the right attitude might not be effective if the writing style leads to miscommunications. There could be many reasons for this, including the fact that occasionally certain words may cause specific reactions, that nonnative speakers may not be able to comprehend all thenuances of some sentences, that our brains may be different and that our world may be perceived differently; hence, neurodiversity must be taken into account. Whatever the reason, it’s important to review not just what we write but how.

A few years ago, I asked for some feedback on how I respond. I was given some sound advice, but I also got a surprise comment. They pointed out that when I wrote” Oh, ]… ]”, I made them feel stupid. That’s not what I meant to say! I recently realized that I had been giving them months of feedback without ever feeling stupid. I was horrified … but also thankful. I quickly changed the way I typed “oh” into my list of replaced words (your choice between aText, TextExpander, or others ), so that it was instantly deleted when I typed “oh.”

Something to keep in mind because it’s quite common, especially in teams with a strong group spirit, is that people frequently beat around the bush. It’s important to remember here that a positive attitude doesn’t mean going light on the feedback—it just means that even when you provide hard, difficult, or challenging feedback, you do so in a way that’s respectful and constructive. The best thing you can do for someone is to encourage their growth.

Giving feedback in written form can be reviewed by someone else who isn’t directly involved, which can help to reduce or eliminate any bias that might exist. I found that the best, most insightful moments for me have happened when I’ve shared a comment and I’ve asked someone who I highly trusted,” How does this sound”?,” How can I do it better”, and even” How would you have written it” ?—and I’ve learned a lot by seeing the two versions side by side.

The format

Asynchronous feedback also has a significant inherent benefit: it allows us to spend more time making sure that the suggestions ‘ clarity and actionability meet two main objectives.

Let’s imagine that someone shared a design iteration for a project. You are commenting on it while reviewing it. Let’s try to think about some factors that might be helpful to consider, as there are many ways to accomplish this, and context is of course a factor.

In terms of clarity, start by grounding the critique that you’re about to give by providing context. This includes specifically describing where you’re coming from: do you know the project well, or do you just see it for the first time? Do you have a high-level perspective, or are you just learning the details? Are there regressions? Which user’s point of view are you addressing when offering your feedback? Is the design iteration at a point where it would be acceptable to ship this, or are there significant issues that need to be addressed first?

Providing context is helpful even if you’re sharing feedback within a team that already has some information on the project. And context is a must when providing cross-team feedback. If I were to review a design that might be directly connected to my work, I would say that, underlining my opinion as external, and if I had no idea how the project came to that conclusion.

We often focus on the negatives, trying to outline all the things that could be done better. That is obviously important, but focusing on the positives, especially if you saw improvement in the previous iteration, is even more crucial. Although this may seem superfluous, it’s important to keep in mind that design is a field with hundreds of possible solutions for each problem. So pointing out that the design solution that was chosen is good and explaining why it’s good has two major benefits: it confirms that the approach taken was solid, and it helps to ground your negative feedback. Sharing positive feedback can help prevent regressions in things that are going well because those things will have been deemed significant in the long run. Positive feedback can also help, as an added bonus, prevent impostor syndrome.

There’s one powerful approach that combines both context and a focus on the positives: frame how the design is better than the status quo ( compared to a previous iteration, competitors, or benchmarks ) and why, and then on that foundation, you can add what could be improved. There is a significant difference between a critique of a design that is already in good shape and one that isn’t quite there yet.

Depersonalizing the feedback is another way to make it better: it should always be about the work and never the creator. It’s” This button isn’t well aligned” versus” You haven’t aligned this button well”. This can be changed in your writing very quickly by reviewing it just before sending.

One of the best ways to assist the designer who is reading through your feedback in terms of actionability is to divide it into bullet points or paragraphs, which are easier to review and analyze one by one. For longer pieces of feedback, you might also consider splitting it into sections or even across multiple comments. Of course, it’s also possible to include screenshots or indicators for the specific area of the interface you’re referring to.

Emojis have been a method I’ve personally used to enhance the bullet points in some situations. So a red square � � means that it’s something that I consider blocking, a yellow diamond � � is something that I can be convinced otherwise, but it seems to me that it should be changed, and a green circle � � is a detailed, positive confirmation. A blue spiral is also used for exploration, open alternatives, or just a note when I’m not sure what to make. However, I’d only use this strategy on teams where I’ve already established a high level of trust because it might turn out to be quite demoralizing if I deliver a lot of red squares, and I’d have to reframe how I’d communicate that.

Let’s see how this would work by reusing the example that we used earlier as the first bullet point in this list:

• 🔶 Navigation—When I see these two buttons, I anticipate one to go forward and the other to go back. But this is the only screen where this happens, as before we just used a single button and an “×” to close. This seems to be breaking the consistency in the flow. Let’s make sure that all screens have the same two forward and back buttons so that users don’t get confused.
• Overall, I believe the page is strong, and this is a good candidate for our version 1. 1.0 release candidate.
• � � Metrics—Good improvement in the buttons on the metrics area, the improved contrast and new focus style make them more accessible.
• Button Style: Using the green accent in this context, which conveys that it is a positive action because green is typically seen as a confirmation color. Should we look for a different color?
• 🔶Tiles—Given the number of items on the page, and the overall page hierarchy, it seems to me that the tiles shouldn’t be using the Subtitle 1 style but the Subtitle 2 style. This will maintain consistency in the visual hierarchy.
• Background: Using a light texture is effective, but I’m not sure if doing so will cause too much noise on this kind of page. What is the thinking in using that?

What about using Figma or another design tool that enables in-place feedback to provide feedback directly? These are generally difficult to use because they conceal discussions and are harder to follow, but they can be very useful in the right context. Just make sure that each of the comments is separate so that it’s easier to match each discussion to a single task, similar to the idea of splitting mentioned above.

One last word: avoid the obvious. Sometimes we might feel good or bad about something, so we don’t say it. Or sometimes we might have a doubt that we don’t express because the question might sound stupid. Say it, that’s fine. Don’t hold it back. You might have to reword it a little to make the reader feel more at ease. Good feedback is transparent, even when it may be obvious.

Another benefit of asynchronous feedback is that written feedback automatically monitors decisions. Why did we do this, especially in large projects? could be a question that pops up from time to time, and there’s nothing better than open, transparent discussions that can be reviewed at any time. For this reason, I suggest using software to save these discussions without keeping them hidden until they are resolved.

Content, tone, and format are all there. Each one of these subjects provides a useful model, but working to improve eight areas—observation, impact, question, timing, attitude, form, clarity, and actionability—is a lot of work to put in all at once. One way to take them one by one is to first identify the area you most need from both your own perspective and feedback from others. Then the third, the third, and so on. At first you’ll have to put in extra time for every piece of feedback that you give, but after a while, it’ll become second nature, and your impact on the work will multiply.

Thanks to Mike Shelton and Brie Anne Demkiw for their initial review of this article.

What on earth is a passionate stress, then?

Envision a person determined to accomplish it all. She has two wonderful children whom she, along with her father who is also working mildly, is homeschooling during a crisis. She loves everyone at work because of how demanding her work is. She wakes up early to get some movement in ( or frequently catch up on work ), prepares dinner while the kids are having breakfast, and works while positioning herself near the end of her “fourth grade” to watch as she balances clients, tasks, and budgets. Sound like a bit? It works well with a supportive group at home and at work.

Sounds like this person needs self-care because she has too much on her disk. But no, she doesn’t have occasion for that. She begins to feel as though she’s dropping pellets. Not enough is achieved. There’s not enough of her to be here and that, she is trying to divide her head in two all the time, all day, every day. She begins to question herself. And her domestic narrative grows more and more critical as those feelings grow in.

Immediately she KNOWS what she needs to do! She ought to do more.

This loop is challenging and risky. Understand why? Because when she doesn’t complete that new target, the story will only get worse. She immediately starts failing. She isn’t doing much. She is insufficient. She’ll discover more she may do because she might neglect, or perhaps her home. She doesn’t nap as much, proceed because much, all in the attempts to do more. Trying to prove herself to herself, but not succeeding in any endeavor. Always feeling “enough”

But, yeah, that’s what zealous burnout looks like for me. It doesn’t develop immediately in a great sign; it develops gradually over the course of several weeks and months. My using operation appears to be moving more quickly than one’s focus loss. I rate up and up and up… and therefore I simply quit.

I am the only person who has the ability.

The things that shape us are interesting. Through the camera of youth, I viewed the worries, problems, and sacrifices of someone who had to make it all work without having much. I always went without and occasionally received extras thanks to my mother’s tremendous resourcefulness and my father’s generosity.

When my mother gave me food stamps as a child, I didn’t think shame; rather, I would have good started any debates about the subject, orally eviscerating anyone who dared to criticize the handicapped woman who was attempting to ensure all of our needs were met with so little. As a child, I watched the way the worry of not making those ends meet impacted persons I love. Because I was” the one who was” make our lives a little easier, I would take on many of the physical things as the non-disabled people in my house. I soon realized that putting more of myself into it was linked to fears or confusion; I am the one who does. I learned first that when something frightens me, I may double down and work harder to make it better. I am capable of taking on the problem. I’ve been told that I seem brave when people have seen this in me as an adult, but truth be told, I’m no. If I seem courageous, it’s because this conduct was forged from other people’s worries.

And here I am, more than 30 years later, also feeling the urge to aimlessly force myself forward when faced with daunting tasks in front of me, assuming that I am the one who is and consequently does. I feel more motivated to demonstrate that I can influence things if I put in more effort, put on more responsibilities, and demonstrate that I can influence issues.

I do not see people who struggle financially as problems, because I have seen how powerful that tide is be—it takes you along the way. I really understand that I have had the opportunity to avoid many of the difficulties that were current in my youth. Having said that, I continue to believe that she should and am still” the one who can.” As a result, I do think I’ve failed if I had to struggle to make ends meet for my own home. Though I am supported and educated, most of this is due to great wealth. But, I’ll give myself the haughtiness of claiming that my choices were wise and that they had sparked that success. My sense of identity comes from the notion that I am” the one who can” and feel compelled to accomplish the most. I can choose to halt, and with some pretty precise warm water splashed in my experience, I’ve made the choice to previously. However, I don’t always choose to stop; instead, I move forwards, driven by a concern that is so present that I hardly notice until I’m completely worn out.

Why all this story, then? You see, stress is a volatile thing. Over the years, I have read and heard a bit about stress. Stress is present. Especially today, with COVID, many of us are balancing more than we ever have before—all at once! It’s challenging, and so many wonderful experts are affected by the mitigation, the shutting down, and the procrastination. There are significant reports that, in my opinion, relate to the majority of people around, but not me. That’s not what my fatigue looks like.

The perilous visibility of passionate burnout

In many workplaces, extra work, more energy, and general focused commitment are seen as an asset ( and occasionally that’s all it is ). They see anyone trying to rise to difficulties, never one stuck in their anxiety. Some well-intentioned organizations have measures in place to safeguard their employees from stress. However, in situations like this, those alarms don’t usually ring, and some business people are surprised and depressed when the unavoidable stop happens. And maybe even actually betrayed.

When it comes to parenting, which is more so when it comes to working, participating in after-school hobbies, practicing self-care in the form of diet and exercise, and also meeting with friends for caffeine or wine, it is more often said that mothers are praised as being so on top of it all. Many of us watched endless streaming COVID episodes to see how challenging the female protagonist is, but she is strong, funny, and capable of doing it. It’s a “very special episode” when she breaks down, cries in the bathroom, woefully admits she needs help, and just stops for a bit. Truth be told, countless people are hidden in tears or doom-scrolling to escape. Although we are aware that the media is a lie to amuse us, the perception that it’s what we should strive for frequently permeates much of society.

Women and burnout

I cherish men. And despite the fact that I don’t love every man ( heads up, I don’t love every woman or nonbinary person either ), I think there is a wonderful range of people who fit that particular binary gender.

That said, women are still more often at risk of burnout than their male counterparts, especially in these COVID stressed times. Mothers at work experience the pressure to do all the “mom” things while giving absolutely everything. Mothers who are not employed feel they need to do more to” justify” their lack of traditional employment. Women who are not mothers often feel the need to do even more because they don’t have that extra pressure at home. It’s so ingrained in our culture and vicious and systemic that we frequently are unaware of how much pressure we place on ourselves and others.

Beyond happiness, there are costs. Harvard Health Publishing released a study a decade ago that “uncovered strong links between women’s job stress and cardiovascular disease”. According to the CDC,” Heart disease is the leading cause of death for women in the United States, killing 299,578 women in 2017—or roughly 1 in every 5 female deaths,”

According to what I’ve read, this connection between work stress and health is more dangerous for women than it is for their non-female counterparts.

But what if your burnout isn’t like that either?

That might not be you either. After all, we are all unique, and so is our way of responding to stress. It’s part of what makes us human. Don’t put too much emphasis on how burnout looks; instead, learn to recognize it in yourself. What are a few questions I occasionally ask my friends if they worry about them.

Are you happy? This straightforward query ought to be your first inquiry. Even if you’re burning out doing all the things you love, chances are you’ll just stop enjoying yourself as much as you do.

Do you feel empowered to say no? I’ve observed in myself and others that someone who is out of sorts no longer feels like they can turn their back on things. Even those who don’t” speed up” feel pressured to say “yes” to avoid apprehension.

What are three things you’ve done for yourself? We all have a tendency to stop doing things for ourselves, according to another observation. anything from avoiding conversations with friends to skipping showers and eating poorly. These can be red flags.

Are you using justifications? Many of us make an effort to avoid feeling burned out. Over and over I have heard,” It’s just crunch time”,” As soon as I do this one thing, it will all be better”, and” Well I should be able to handle this, so I’ll figure it out”. And it could be just one more thing you need to learn, or it might just be crunch time. Life happens because of that. BUT if this doesn’t stop, be honest with yourself. If you’ve worked more than 50 hours per week since January, you might be thinking that it’s not crunch time; rather, it might be a bad situation you’re finding yourself in.

Do you have a strategy for overcoming this feeling? If something is truly temporary and you do need to just push through, then it has an exit route with a
defined conclusion

Take the time to listen to yourself like you would a friend. Be honest, allow yourself to be uncomfortable, and break the thought cycles that prevent you from healing.

So what do we do now?

What I just described has a different path to burnout, but it’s still burnout. There are well-established approaches to working through burnout:

• Get enough sleep.
• Eat well.
• Work out.
• Leave the house.
• Take a break.
• Overall, practice self-care.

These are challenging for me because they seem like more chores. Doing any of the above for me feels like a waste if I’m in the burnout cycle. The narrative is that if I’m already failing, why would I take care of myself when I’m dropping all those other balls? People need me, don’t they?

Your inner voice might already be pretty bad if you’re deeply in the cycle. If you need to, tell yourself you need to take care of the person your people depend on. Use your roles to help make healing easier by defending the time you spend working on you if they are pushing you toward burnout.

I have come up with a few suggestions for me to help me remember the airline attendant’s advice to put on your face first when I feel burned out.

Cook an elaborate meal for someone!

Okay, since I’m a “food-focused” person, cooking for someone always comes naturally to my mind. There are countless tales in my home about people coming into the kitchen, turning right, and leaving when they noticed I was” chopping angrily.” But it’s more than that, and you should give it a try. Seriously. If you don’t feel like giving time for yourself, do it for someone else. Most of us work in a digital world, so cooking can fill all of your senses and force you to be in the moment with all the ways you perceive the world. It can help you get a better perspective and help you get out of your head. I’ve always had the ability to pick a location on a map and prepare food that comes from it ( thanks, Pinterest ). I love cooking Indian food, as the smells are warm, the bread needs just enough kneading to keep my hands busy, and the process takes real attention for me because it’s not what I was brought up making. And ultimately, we all triumph!

Vent like a sniveling jerk.

Be careful with this one!

Over the past few years, I have made an effort to practice more gratitude, and I am aware of the benefits that are really present. Having said that, sometimes you just need to let it all out, even the ugly ones. Hell, I’m a big fan of not sugarcoating our lives, and that sometimes means that to get past the big pile of poop, you’re gonna wanna complain about it a bit.

When that is required, approach a trusted friend and express your concerns verbally. You must rely on this friend to not judge you, to feel your pain, and, most importantly, to instruct you to get your rectal cavity removed. Seriously, it’s about getting a reality check here! One of the things that I admire most about my husband is how he can simplify things down to the simplest of terms, even though sometimes after the fact. We’re spending our lives together, and I can’t wait to get over it. I’m so grateful for his words of dedication, love, and acceptance of me. It also, of course, has meant that I needed to remove my head from that rectal cavity. Again, those are typically appreciated in retrospect.

Grab a book, please!

There are many books out there that aren’t so much self-help as they are people just like you sharing their stories and how they’ve come to find greater balance. You might discover something that resonates with you. Among the titles that have stood out to me are:

• Thrive by Arianna Huffington
• Tim Ferriss ‘ book Tools of Titans
• Girl, Stop Apologizing by Rachel Hollis
• Dare to Lead by Brené Brown

Or, if I love to read or listen to a book that doesn’t have anything to do with my work-life balance, I can use another tactic. I’ve read the following books, and I think they helped to balance me out because my mind was thinking about the subjects they were interested in rather than whizzing around:

• The Drunken Botanist by Amy Stewart
• Darin Olien’s Superlife
• A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived by Adam Rutherford
• Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemenway

Choose a topic on YouTube or subscribe to a podcast if you don’t enjoy reading. In addition to learning about raising chickens and ducks, I’ve watched a lot of gardening and permaculture topics. For the record, I do not have a particularly large food garden, nor do I own livestock of any kind… yet. I just find the subject fascinating, and it is unrelated to anything that needs to be done in my life.

Give yourself a break.

You are never going to be perfect—hell, it would be boring if you were. It’s acceptable to have flaws and imperfections. It’s human nature to be depressed, anxious, and tired. It’s OK to not do it all. You can’t be brave without being imperfect, which is scary, but you can’t be brave without being imperfect.

This is the most crucial part: give yourself permission to NOT do it all. You never promised to be everything to everyone at all times. We have greater power than the repressed fears that motivate us.

It’s challenging. It is hard for me. That it’s okay to stop is what inspired me to write this. It’s acceptable that your unhealthy habit, which might even be beneficial to those around you, needs to end. You can still be successful in life.

I just recently learned that we are all euthanizing in our daily lives. What will your professional accomplishments say, knowing that yours won’t be mentioned in that speech? What do you want it to say?

Look, I understand that none of these concepts will “fix it,” and that’s not their intention. Only how we react to the things around us is what we control. These suggestions are to help stop the spiral effect so that you are empowered to address the underlying issues and choose your response. They are things that most of the time work for me. They might be able to work for you.

Does this sound familiar?

If something resounds familiar to you, it’s not just you. Don’t let your sluggish self-talk indicate that you “even burn out wrong.” It’s not wrong. I think this need to do more comes from a place of love, determination, motivation, and other wonderful qualities that contribute to your amazing persona, even if you’re like my own drivers. We’re going to be fine, you see. The lives that unfold before us might never look like that story in our head—that idea of “perfect” or “done” we’re looking for, but that’s OK. Really, when we stop and look around, usually the only eyes that judge us are in the mirror.

Do you recall the Winnie the Pooh cartoon in which Pooh ate so much at Rabbit’s house that his buttocks couldn’t fit through the door? Well, I already have a strong connection to Rabbit, so it was surprising when he unexpectedly declared that this was unacceptable. But do you recall what happened next? He made the most of the large butt in his kitchen by placing a shelf across poor Pooh’s ankles and decorations on his back.

We are resourceful and aware that we can push ourselves when we are needed, even when we are exhausted to the core or have a ton of clutter in our room. None of us has to be afraid, as we can manage any obstacle put in front of us. And maybe that means we will need to redefine success to make room for comfortable human space, but that doesn’t really sound that bad either.

So, if you’re anywhere right now, take a deep breath. Do what you need to do to get out of your head. Give thanks and be considerate.