Not cruel at all! I asked and you answered. And you very well may be right. My expectations were probably just off. I thought for some reason it would have more "world constraints" so if I say "swim to the center of the earth" it would recognize that as not possible.

I do find games with no rules tedious and not fun. The card game Fluxx, for example, I cannot stand.

I played it with a couple friends, just testing what weird shit would work. We laughed our asses off. If you're looking for a strictly structured game with a good story, that's not happening.

I love the jankiness of these early ML games/stories/etc. and that's what you're missing.

Fluxx has a ton of rules, does it not? It's just that the rules keep changing and you have to keep track of them.

I'd say a closer analogy would be Calvinball, where you just make it up as you go along.

In fluxx, cross-turn strategy is basically impossible, as the rules may completely change between turns. I've found that reading a book during other peoples' turns then just looking up and treating each turn as a completely new game is just as effective as tracking the game across turns and significantly less frustrating. So yes, there are rules, but only within a turn.

Furthermore, I was dismayed when I learned (upon first time playing) that "It's easy to get started: there are no rules to read!" actually means "you spend the entire game reading rules!"

I acknowledge that this is not a very social (and somewhat rude) way to play this social game, which is why I typically politely decline to play it.

Once you know what all the cards do, you don’t really end up reading them anymore. So, it’s a lie that there are no rules, but learning the rules is spread across multiple game sessions. The way we play other games, that’s roughly what happens with those games too. Games don’t “count” until we’ve all got a grasp of the rules.

You can plan strategy. Whether it’s more or less likely to be thwarted I can’t really say. I try to be flexible with a few plans. The main difference is you are more likely to be accidentally thwarted than in other games.

Calvinball at least has rules in the sense of physical laws still being in effect. AI Dungeon 2 doesn't even have that.