That last game really speaks to how you could play in real life. I once played a similar styled game against a GM and one. It all started very innocently by me placing one piece near his King.
He ignored it because that piece by itself was harmless. But after 3-4 moves he had to start paying attention.
I strongly believe placing pieces near your opponents King will make any level opponent nervous.
I thought it was pretty easy on hard. It took me like 15 minutes to find the right moves. I played three games against it. In the first two games I saw that it really didn't care about king safety, so in the next two games I only focused on the king. In the second game I sacrificed my pieces to get a nice position in front of the king. I had a great advantage but I noticed it was also pretty good at defending when in trouble. The last game he played the caro kann, I did not sac anything, but just piled my pieces upon the king. At this point chesspartner sacced his knight for two pawns. Remember all my pieces were aimed at the king so I still had a positional advantage. At thit point I saw how I was able to use a knight fork to capture a rook... It's a pity I can't download a pgn anywhere because I would be able to show you. All with all it was a pretty fun game.