Bored, I finally went back and played the last half of Double Fine's Hack'n'Slash, after the UI choices get so painful to deal with that they overshadow the rest of the game.
It joins Else Heart.Break() in the category of "this is, in concept, so entirely my shit — and in implementation, I loathe it". Although Else Heart.Break(), of course, will always come dead last in comparison, for the mandatory-to-progess plot point where, as the protagonist, you have to stalk a girl you just met like some kind of murdery incel.
...only just realised that the "play by (ersatz) programming" game genre was one of the major influences on the way I wrote the programmable reality of Onset's The City