Recently I have been playing the indie game Forager. It is a farming/ mining/ combat 2.5d crafting game. The game has an amazing progression system, simple gameplay, cute graphics, engaging building and crafting and a decent difficulty curve. At least in the first 15 hours. The best designed part of the game is the progression in the first couple hours. Mechanics are introduced slowly showing the basics and how much more there is to do. The game allows you to grow at your own pace, buying islands when you realize you need the space, getting the skill tree upgrades that feel right at the time, and giving access knowledge of upgrades before it is possible to access them. This steady trickle of knowledge get me hooked right away and kept me coming back for a few days. Unfortunately, towards the end of hour 8 the game opens up a bit too much, the freedom that felt amazing earlier showed me that I expanded in a direction that required more work that the others. There were challenges I did not know about that the skills I researched did not prepare me for. Eventually I felt that I needed to grind to catch up in other aspects of the game to get better. The progression still feels good but the materials to get some upgrades are specific to some areas the player may not have explored yet. Seeking these out does not feel great and drove me to check the wiki for the answers to some of my questions. This game definitely will feel more fun and complete once I have more knowledge and move on to my second play through.
From this game I have found a decent example of giving the player too much freedom even in this restricted form. I will refer to this game as a showing of design choices to strive for and to be careful of.