For some games discovering the rules is the main element of having fun. This means knowing the rules too well results in less/no fun. This is also true for this game, so read into it till you understand whats gooing on roughly, but don't read more than you want to know.
The tutorial room should be explained enough so the player just has to follow the instructions. Afterwards the player is assigned a dull job. Not dooing the job will get the player killed, so the conclusion should be to try and get out of this job. A NPC offers the oportunity to get assigned some other work after the player has more reputation. The critical value for this is 10 reputation. So achieving 10 reputation basically means to win.
Reputation is primary gained by completing a certain quest. The quest giver usually has the quests: "transport" and "move to storage". "move to storage" rewards 1 reputation. If the player is using auto mode, the entire quest can be completed using one keystroke. So in naive calculation the player should need to do some minimal busywork and wins the game.
In practice there are several mechanisms to prevent the player from accumulating reputation. The most important of these is regulary reducing the players reputation, this means the player is forced to optimise the ratio of "move to storage" quest completions vs. time and keep this ratio up for some time. If this does not happen, the player will not win. How to do this is the first (and for now only) main puzzle in the game.
This is a point where you might want to stop reading.
The most obvious way to increase reputation gain vs. time is to only accept the "move to storage" quests and not to accept the transport quest that doesn't give a reward at all. This is made harder by two other NPC having the same job as the player does. The NPCs and player share the same quest pool. This means if a quest is taken by either the player or NPC it will be locked until completion. If a NPC takes the quest the player cannot earn reputation till the NPC is done.
The intended way to solve this is to time asking for quests. It is not possible to refuse taking a quest after asking for quests. This means the player cannot repeat asking for quests until the desired quest appears. The player has to guess what quests are available and ask when you think a "move to storage" quest is available. To get more information about what quests are available the NPC can be asked what they are doing or obsevered where they go.
Other intended solutions like killing the other NPCs exist and unintended but valid solutions like blocking the paths of NPCs exist. With some tricks and practice it is possible to find patterns that give a net gain in reputation and to win the game. To make things a bit harder the game changes the evironment from time to time in order to change the conditions of the puzzle and to force the player to adapt.
In the future there should be a lot more puzzles like this, but for now this was the main content of the game.
- 11 minute playthrough vimeo