Ask for the shape of the challenge.

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

Every problem has a build that solves it, so the difficulty is whether you think to make one. The Depths are darker and meaner than anything in Breath of the Wild.

Every puzzle teaches a rule it refuses to state, and the island is perfectly happy to let you stand in front of a panel you have no vocabulary for yet.

The only game here that ships the site’s own thesis as a menu option — combat and puzzle difficulty are two separate settings, and the two are genuinely unrelated demands.

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.

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

It is not hard to survive so much as hard to be told nothing and still choose the right direction.

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.

Depth and darkness rather than combat. It is careful never to tell you where to go, which is either the appeal or the wall depending on the player.

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