Tbh: I liked the original thread more... XD

The posts in that other thread are certainly more interesting than these posts
.

This is a game I would love to play, if it weren't for the fact that it lacks mouse support, requiring the use of either the keyboard or a controller. Without a controller, puzzles become difficult to solve, especially those involving selecting and rotating pieces, which makes controlling, rotating, and moving parts around unnecessarily tedious and complicated. Using the controller to play the piano is akin to playing it with a keyboard. There is no direct way to select keys to play. Instead, the cursor moves to the left or right over each individual key.

Furthermore, there is no manual save feature. When you select "Sleep" and "Wake Up" from the menu screen, you are reset back to the starting point in the cellar, while puzzle progress is preserved. After going to sleep for the first time, there is a menu option called "Forget," which is used to reset progress. It's unclear to me whether this means resetting the progress of an individual puzzle or the entire progress of a task such as "Bring me Beauty."

Controls are a hassle because what could be done with two mouse clicks takes several button or key presses. This isn't a game I'm going to buy unless they adapt the control schemes and add mouse support because with the present control schemes, it makes no fun to play.

Those are some absolutely terrible design choices. Thanks for the warning. The game looked somewhat interesting, but knwoing this, I'm not even going to give it a second thought.

No problem! It looks adorable, and I wanted to see more because it hit all the right notes. This makes it a sad case of 'could be very good or even great,' if only... You know what's really sad about it? It has taken me only about 30 minutes to notice all those strange and, in my opinion, illogical design decisions and how they are negatively impacting gameplay - unnecessarily so, if I might add.

For instance, I read a comment from a developer explaining that they decided to reset the character's position to remind players of their task. On the other hand, there is a beautiful encyclopedia that they could have used to provide a bucket list of things still to do. They could also allow adding notes, which I don't think is really necessary unless there are a dozen steps to solve a task.

I don't believe the developers will change any of it, which would be a shame, as otherwise, I will gladly be willing to give it a second chance.

So many of these games releasing on GOG look like high school projects or asset flips. Where's the ambitious stuff like Hinterland's 'Long Dark' was?

That's the kind of info, that I think, should be available on the game's page.

While the game's description doesn't mention "point 'n' click", most people will surely assume, that a game like this can be played with the mouse (too).

And the controller buttons depicted on some of the screenshots alone, surely don't give the impression, that this can be played solely with (KB and) controller.

This becomes very clear when you take a look at St. Elsewhere's page. Additionally, during start-up, you'll also be presented with a message stating, "This game requires a controller for the best experience," as shown in the screenshot I've attached.

So GOG should really add an Unsupported Devices and Best Played With section to the game pages, because otherwise, without free demos and prologues, there is only one way of finding out: purchasing the game blindly.

I've stopped expecting that multi-platform games will fully support all input schemes on PC. That's no longer the norm, and games like CLeM are no longer exceptions. It's what I call lazy development when even the suggested controlling method isn't good.

I wouldn't agree with the "very clear".
Even there they don't tell the potential buyer, that the mouse is not supported.
The only difference is, that they added a little note, in which the developers recommend using a controller.
Slightly better, sure - but far from perfect. That is nice - but also only presented to you AFTER you bought the game.
And it also only states: "This game needs a controller for best experience".
That can be said for many games - it doesn't imply the deactivation of the mouse as an input device. That's an idea, I am in full support of. Which is a joke in itself, given that the PC once was the most versatile gaming platform with a whole plethora of different input devices available, "tailor-made" for every task at hand: KB, mouse, joystick, dedicated flightsticks (with pedals), steering wheels (with pedals)...

I thought I saw it in the "System Requirements" section, but that must have been for a different game, my bad. Some developers do add this information there - see attachment 1, or on top of a page - attachment 2.

OR playing demo or prologue, as in this case, otherwise I would not have known. :-)

Exactly. It's all about options and, more importantly, optimization for native input devices. In the case of CLeM, developers went out of their way to add an option to remap keys, as you can see in this screenshot. This does nothing to improve gameplay.

I was adamant when a multi-platform game gets released. For instance, when Creaks got out they also stated that it's best played with a controller, and at that time, I was a little fed up thanks to games supporting KB+M but not really being playable. Developers reassured me that it also works perfectly with a keyboard and mouse, so I gave it a chance, and it turned out it did.

So even when a game offers native input device support, there is no guarantee that developers were not still lazy by enabling support in Unity or any other engine but never even taking care that it actually works as it should.