So we have a game where death isn't cheap, but the mechanics are built such that it makes it perfectly clear that it isn't. It doesn't come at you by surprise, because the scarcity of resources and save points are implications that your life is precious and that you must protect it. That ice cream truck and that whole cliff business may have been unfair, but it was a small blessing that they occurred immediately after you saved. That wasn't being a dick, so to say. It was being medicine. It didn't taste good, but if you didn't eat it when you have the privilege to, then you would have found yourself dying in far worse situations down the line. It takes the traditional, omnipresent mechanics of "fail until you learn something", and invokes it to prevent the player from getting even more frustrated down the line. It's one of those effortless aspects of game design that you have to slap yourself in the face to understand just because it was so obvious.
— Froghand on LISA, from LISA Session 02 Review
.
.