“Shit, this game is hard.” It was the jesting gripe heard ‘round the panel room at the Game Developer’s Conference on Monday, March 14th. A grievance that, surprisingly, came from game developer Ojiro Fumoto himself while playing a live tech demo of an early prototype of his own game: Downwell. Fumoto’s vertigo-inducing roguelike Downwell released late last year to critical acclaim, and soon became the hot topic at everyone’s fingertips. In the aptly named panel, “Polishing the Boots – Designing Downwell Around One Key Mechanic,” Fumoto detailed the many iterations his now infamous “gunboot” mechanic took on through the game’s…