Ask for the shape of the challenge.

Deduction with no fail state and no hints beyond the ship itself. It only confirms an answer once three of them are right together, which keeps guessing expensive.

The rules are the puzzle, so being stuck feels less like failing and more like simply not having had the thought yet.

The manual is written in a language you cannot read and is also the walkthrough. Combat is secondary to noticing what a page has been telling you for hours.

Every run is decided by about ten card choices you made while thinking about something else.

Poker hands as a scaling problem. The ante climbs faster than a fair deck can, so a run lives or dies on whether the multiplier joker you needed ever appeared in the shop.

The aircraft are modelled well past where the tutorials stop. An instrument approach in an airliner is a procedure most people learn outside the game entirely.

The rules are the difficulty. A fight lost on turn one was lost in the inventory screen, and the game is content to let you walk into an encounter five levels early without a word. Honour mode makes one wipe final; Explorer makes almost nothing final.

Deity is an economy handicap rather than a smarter opponent, so the skill is knowing which of forty systems can be safely ignored this particular game.

Straightforward once you find the right weapon, and famously obtuse about its second half — the difficulty is knowing that half exists at all.

A city builder where the scarce resource is time and every law you sign is unrepealable. The storm arrives on schedule whether or not the city is ready.