To be honest, I think it's a bit arrogant to suggest they didn't understand what they were trying to achieve or create with Legend of Grimrock. If you read the blog, I think it's quite clear that they're sufficiently intelligent to know exactly what they were trying to do. Anyway, glad to read that they've been really heavily discussing what they want to do with the sequel.
Calling someone who disagrees with the developers arrogant is too easy.
Arrogance is about feeling superior - and that has nothing to do with this. Unless I'm arrogant because I'm not happy with their imitation of Dungeon Master. They very clearly stated over and over that Dungeon Master is the game they were emulating.
I guess I'm also arrogant for suggesting that the Blizzard team behind Diablo 3 didn't really understand Diablo? They did sell 10+ million copies afterall.
In any case - according to Steam statistics (I believe) - the completion rate of Grimrock is around 8%.
That tells me that they knew how to market the game - and they certainly got a lot of people to buy it. Myself included.
But not a lot of people actually completed it. Maybe there's a message there.
They over-emphasized puzzles if you compare the game to Dungeon Master. I won't go into quality of puzzles - because that's simply too subjective. But Dungeon Master only had a few levels that were as puzzle-heavy as the entirety of Grimrock.
Saying they didn't really understand Dungeon Master in that way is hardly arrogant, is it?
I certainly fail to see how it could be. Unless my understanding of a beloved genre potentially being superior somehow translates to an overall superiority as a human being.
Again, to my mind - they didn't manage to emulate Dungeon Master sufficiently well.
Sometimes, it's ok to criticise the work of people who've had monetary success in the indie scene. You don't have to be in awe of it - and you can actually be dealing with human beings that aren't perfect.
I congratulate them on their success - but I honestly don't think their take on the genre was all that great. The production values were GREAT for an indie. Very impressive indeed. But the actual gameplay was repetitive after a while, and while the genre always had an element of repetition - it used to be more about exploration and immersion than constant samey puzzles.
I do understand that the short development time meant they couldn't really create elaborate or fulfilling level designs. It takes a lot of effort to create a strong story and appealing exploration. Variation on a handful of puzzles might have been smarter in that way. But that doesn't mean it's arrogant to point it out.
In any case, I hope they'll use their success to go beyond that design.