maybe I understood something wrong but this is what I underrtood:
You type in according to the rules. If you type in successfully and win the battle you can keep to tell the game you like whatever was shown or delete to say you didnt like it. On top in various scenes you can also make decisions that can set variables increasing the quantity of certain scenes.
Where my issue lies is both the things you adressed.
1 is the censorship, I feel like corrupting the data ( by failing to type the word properly) should break your screen , make things less visible and maybe turn a couple letters upside down or remove some making the game more challenging. getting a critical success feels somewhat punishing even if it is better in the long run
2 is my gripes with the difficulty. I personally think there should be a global difficulty setting to change the game to make it overall more or less difficult. I dont mean there should be an easy mode, but for my typing speed it goes from way too easy to quite literally impossible in the library and thats just 1 level of difference.
yeah that is just my opinions not trying to stir conflict, your game your creative direction after all. Ill give it another shot now and see if Ilearn something new
So, at least from what I've gathered from playing it:
1. The idea is temptation. The storyline says that if you lose, you die (or some equivalent to death). The AI is trying to tempt you to lose, so showing you less when you do well fits that line of thinking. Trials of the Succubi works along the same line of thinking: risk losing your soul and/or relationship with your fiancé for what they're offering, which is a great view of their body at minimum up to sex depending on the scene. This idea doesn't work for everyone here, since people might be looking more for the stimulus than the gameplay elements attached to it (part of why VNs are super common here compared to other types of games).
2. The difficulty curve can be a little frustrating if you're aiming for perfection at all times, that's for sure. As it is now, it will scale to a point where you won't keep up no matter how fast you type. It's not a big deal though, since between different ladybug hacks and corruption taking time to build up before it matters, you can afford to take those hits without losing anything except maybe a little pride in not getting through it unscathed (which depending on which random encounters you get on some levels, is honestly impossible anyway as they have a corruption over time implemented). At least based on what Indyc said about the scaling now, it cares far more about how many times you get the prompt typed in correctly than time, so the occasional miss should have keep the scaling more in check.
On a different note: does anyone know what encounter I'm missing from ToTS? I've run into the core 4, Alina, Mrs. Capone and Lily for regular scenes, which means I haven't run into whatever the last one is.