My main gripe with npm is the massive complexity of packaging when you have transpilation and different modes in the package.json file. Especially with component libs that need to be packaged.
Nice write up! Nevertheless, these are very specific circumstances:
* They didn't select Rust as the best tool available to create a game, they decided to create a Rust project which happens to be a game
* When the objective and mental model of a solution is clear, the execution is trivial. I bet I could recreate a software which took me 3 months to develop in 3 days, if I just have to retype the solution instead of finding a solution. No matter which language
* They seem to struggle with the most trivial of tasks. Having to call out being able to utilize an A* library (an algorithm worth like 10 lines of code) or struggling with scripting (trivial with proven systems like lua) suggests a quite novice team
