Puzzle-like games

Some people play games as a way to relax. From what I've heard, they already spend lots of effort in their life or their work, and look to games as something mindless and fun. I understand but can't relate. In my free time, I find that my favourite things to do require a lot of thinking. In particular, quite a few of my interests are puzzle-related. Some examples:

• interactive fiction like All Things Devours, where "puzzles" involve figuring out clues in the text and talking to NPCs or performing particular actions in order to progress the story
• puzzlehunts like Colby's Curious Cookoff, where "puzzles" involve figuring out connections from a provided set of clues and extracting an answer, often in a surprising way
• strategy deck-based games with low RNG like Prismata and Quantum Protocol, where "puzzles" involve figuring out a way to beat the enemies with the deck

I have a lot of things to say about all of these topics, but those will be their own individual posts.

What about actual puzzle games?

I'm actually not a big fan of "true" puzzle games. I have little patience for sokoban-like games (e.g. Baba is You or Stephen's Sausage Roll) and stuff like Bloxorz. I can get through sudokus and Nikoli puzzles when I need to, but I don't enjoy them enough to do them regularly for fun. But I imagine that these are what come to mind when thinking of the words "puzzle game", so I truthfully I find it hard to answer the question of what genre of games I like. In fact, most people have no clue what IF or puzzlehunts are, so it's hard to elaborate as well.

If I had to explain why I don't like "true" puzzle games, I would guess that it's because I'm bad at guessing what the puzzle author's intentions are (and I don't like being bad). Prismata and QP contain scenarios where your deck is fixed and you need to craft a particular line to win, and I'm not a fan of these. I much prefer the standard battle modes where the game space is less constrained, even though the game often progresses to a similar state. But in the latter case, the game state was intentionally created by me, so I already know possible strategies and caveats I need to keep in mind. Even though the thought processes are similar, it's much easier for me to come up with solutions when I have the background.

I have similar frustrations with certain puzzles in puzzlehunts that require a leap of insight. Without a clue, I find myself trying increasingly wild conjectures, often completely missing the point. It's definitely possible to discover such steps, and I think it can be extremely satisfying to do so without any explicit hints. However, I'm pretty bad at thinking outside the box, and I end up brute forcing everything I can think of once I get stuck. This feels like flailing around in the deep end of the pool without knowing how to swim, so I don't end up enjoying them as much. This step is also often glossed over in solutions: it'll simply say something like "a solver might notice that...", except it's very frustrating when you don't know what you're looking for¹.

Addendum: Puzzle Battlers

There are games like Tetris and Puyo Puyo, which happen to also fall under "puzzle". I actually enjoy these too², but they are definitely not puzzle games. They can feel puzzle-like at a beginner level, where you're balancing setting up clears while avoiding topping out. But once you become good enough to survive indefinitely, the majority of gameplay is autopiloted through recognizing patterns and muscle memory. At very high levels, macro play becomes important where you need to screenwatch your opponent and react accordingly, but I still consider this to be significantly less thinking than what would be required from the games I mentioned above.

These are the games I play when I don't want to think.