i think something that has hit me with SL and now WL is the way gimmicks push the "narrative" rather than survival makes me feel like im watching a game show rather than a survival show. i understand as content creators that they want something there to lead the videos and engage with but, as i have felt and expressed before, when they force results to a series where surviving to stay alive feels cheated or manipulated, i feel like theyve lost the plot of what "Life SMP" even started as.
it is conflicting with this season being multiple gimmicks technically but, when i think about it too i was already worried at the vibe of a new season feeling like theyre running out a gimmicks. and now we have a whole season to run through loads of gimmicks lol. which can be good and bad, and in this case it may start to feel bad if said gimmicks get harder and force what the snails forced this session-- the flow of the entire episodes, and easily shifting the lifespan and survival of a player just with one touch.
you can argue on the fact that the Life series is about having limited lives and not dying, and the way this occurrs changes every season. but from 3L to LimL the things that cause death are other players, the existense of their limited lives, or the 'environment' of vanilla minecraft. LimL only shifted slightly by making lives count down regardless of dying, but it was hardly a twisted in reality. SL made a change towards have i felt was more game-y/content creation focused by making it so that tasks they were forced to do, could result in their deaths, some being blatantly dangerous
WL going from 'haha they get small or big' and the deaths from it being accidents by bugs (which sucks but did not create a huge issue in the end), to 'snail you will instantly die to and there is nothing you can do to stop it' is a pretty big jump from session 1 still basically being vanilla and session 3 being unbalanced and making cause of death forced upon the player in a way that did not work with vanilla survival at all. its like if they just had a creeper following them all session, but instead its just masked with a cute snail. a creeper following you all session isnt 'normal' so it falls out of fashion with how seasons previous to SL felt.
part of me hopes WL can exhaust the feeling of having "gimmicks" not even remotely related to limited lives and next season they can refresh with like... classic 3L mechanic instead. and get a break. i dont want to say things feel "forced" but SL and not this episode were way too strongly shaped by the gimmicks to where i dont feel like im thinking about this being a "Life SMP" series at times, and only reminded when someone suddenly dies in a way that felt random or uncontrolled