There are no refunds for open-source. If you go in with the attitude that you are owed something, you will be thoroughly disappointed.

Also it expects you to buy a bunch of hardware like a raspberry pi and such in order to do the project. I kind of thought there was going to be some kind of public API that acted like a virtual weather sensor but apparently we're building a real one.

Yes I fully understood that this was going to be a cryptic puzzle game and that it required research outside of the game. I expected this to have ARG elements and require abstract thinking. However, I also expected it to be longer than 2 minutes of content. You are given 10 pages to read in-game, they might as well have just been screenshots posted somewhere on the internet. And you have no way to input your solutions in game.

This is gonna be an uphill slog and I'm really excited for it. If you know that's what you're getting into (a long slow grind on puzzles that may not fit well together), this could be great - especially if you're invested in both the work and the community (posting on here helps loads with games like this!) Your mileage may vary!

In the meantime, people do seem to appreciate a developer spending 2 minutes to reply to comments on old issues, just so they’re not ignored and to manage expectations.

Of course user expectations for titles are the most important thing. You don’t want to sell a tiny game at AAA price, because you won’t sell many copies and you’ll make your gamers feel ripped off.

They cannot accept any less than 100 percent of their expectations being met.