Why the best puzzle games skip the hints

Modern puzzle games love to interrupt you. A few seconds of hesitation and a glowing arrow appears, solving the thing for you. It's well-intentioned and completely ruins the point.

Lantern Depths goes the other way. It trusts you to sit with a tricky room, and the payoff when you finally see the solution is huge. That little 'aha' moment is the whole reason to play puzzles.

Good puzzle design teaches through its own rooms, not tutorials. You learn a mechanic, then the game remixes it in a way that proves you understood. No text needed.

If a puzzle game keeps offering to solve itself, I lose interest quickly. Give me room to think and I'll stay for hours.