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.

Tool-based puzzles that stay scrupulously fair, while the optional stars quietly assume you will break the rules the tutorial spent an hour teaching.

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.

A card game that keeps changing what kind of game it is. The difficulty is noticing which rules you are allowed to break, and when.

The only thing gating progress is knowledge inside your own head, which makes it unspoilable once and unplayable if you look it up.

Gentler than the first game and better taught. The co-op campaign is where the difficulty actually lives, because it needs two people to see the same solution at once.

Hard for exactly as long as it takes the idea to arrive, then trivial — a game of realisations rather than of skill.

Document checking against a clock, where the rules change every morning and a mistake comes out of the family’s rent.

Death is frequent, instant and immediately retried, and every puzzle is solvable from what the room shows you. Nothing here is hidden from a patient player.