> We live in a time where innocently surfing the web can result in seeing a single screenshot and completely ruining a game
A game where seeing a single screenshot ruins the experience wasn't very substantial to begin with.
> Because information equals progress in this genre, there’s typically no way to brute force the path forward whenever you find yourself truly stuck.
Except that is almost always possible - games by their very nature are usually very restricted in what you can do which makes exploration of all possible options possible. But usually better would be trying to reason about the problem. Looking up outside help is and has always been equivalent to giving up - which is fine if you don't want to solve the puzzle but definitely not needed to progress if you are patient.
> A game where seeing a single screenshot ruins the experience wasn't very substantial to begin with.
I don't think that follows at all, I'm currently working through Blue Prince and the way in which that game gives you information later on which completely recontextualizes things you have encountered earlier makes it so that a screenshot of something could definitely rob you of experiencing that moment, which is a big part of the joy of that game.
That is true, but, one of the lovely things about Blue Prince is that there's a lot of it so it's very difficult to spoil much of it in one screenshot.
A game where seeing a single screenshot ruins the experience wasn't very substantial to begin with.
> Because information equals progress in this genre, there’s typically no way to brute force the path forward whenever you find yourself truly stuck.
Except that is almost always possible - games by their very nature are usually very restricted in what you can do which makes exploration of all possible options possible. But usually better would be trying to reason about the problem. Looking up outside help is and has always been equivalent to giving up - which is fine if you don't want to solve the puzzle but definitely not needed to progress if you are patient.