First of all - superb game, in just about every aspect. I honestly think I haven't been this immersed in to a game since... well ever. After fifteen years I can finally stop beeing ashamed of the game industry, just to mention the few commercial succeses: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.(SoC of course, CS was horrible, let's hope they get it right again with CoP), Path, Cryostasis, Penumbra and the list could go on for ages, with numerous indie game developers in it. I even started learning the russian alphabet because some of these experiences.

By now it is acknoweldged this is an extremely difficult game, the good thing is the world with which you interact makes sense in that order. You're warned from the very beginning of this aspect - "color is everything". Another thumbs up is the "find out yourself" theme, you're rarely given clear indications on the rules of the world/game. This last feature brings of course discussions of meta-gaming nature(the fact that just about everyone may lie to you coupled with the simple need of survivability in The Void is brilliant). MmmmOK, let's get to the point...

While I definitely understand the importance of difficulty in a survival game, even more so in The Void where it enriches the experience by bringing the urgency of getting out of there, they are some few objections on this matter.
First and foremost difficulty levels were invented for good reasons(for everybody to be able to experience the game, being able to finish a game in a shorter period of time if you've got work to do etc.).
The "easy patch" shouldn't be to easy, or, if it is, there should also be an intermediate level of some sort. I for one would have loved to play on this hipotethical intermediate level. I usually play on the hardest mode possible, on every genre of game and this is the first time I think in 5 years I've needed to use cheats in order to get by (2 nasty occasions). I could have just reloaded from a younger cycle but I'm on a time limit in real life... understand what I mean about difficulty levels? The fact is not everyone is enchanted by the ideea of spending 1-2 days in front of a game(that let's be honest, frustrates the hell out of you).
This intermediate level for example would try for the first 15 cycles to be slightly gentler on the number of predators. The map is literally filled with them to the point in which you can't navigate through it, they consume all your nerva if you want to go through(no matter how much crimson or violet you have on you they will deplete nerva) - simply not beeing able to reach the point where you could extract lympha is ludicrous, it's a lose lose situation. The giants that kill the trees are again a shock, it's the same issue - they take all your nerva and it simply stays there to be revived for the next cycle, it should give you rest for at least a cycle, again there are this lose lose situations. The witches that jump from certain flowers that you pick up are just to fast, reduce their speed a little(first time it happened I actually didn't know what hit me, honest). The boss fights are decent as they are I think.

The point is that it should be about really subtle changes not large environment modifications, for example every cycle revealing +50% lympha would be way to easy(adequate for... well an easy game mode).

The reason I mentioned just the first 15 cycles is that if you get past those from that point on it's quite manageable. Of course if I would start a new game now I probably wouldn't have any problems(knowing the game mechanisms and so on), but this sort of approach should clearly be optional not mandatory.

Again, congratulations for an incredible interactive experience. We can only hope the next IPL creation will surpass this one(will satisfy for the same quallity dough 8) ).