Games should sometimes give players time to struggle before stepping in with a hint. That is the case Sam Chandler makes in his October 9, 2026, Shacknews opinion feature: help can keep frustration from becoming a dead end, but help offered too quickly can steal the chance to reason through a problem and feel clever for solving it.
Why hints can arrive too soon
A hint is useful when a player has run out of ideas or is close to giving up. But if it appears before there has been a meaningful chance to explore, it can interrupt the very process that makes a puzzle satisfying: noticing a detail, testing an idea, and connecting the pieces without being told what to do.
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Chandler’s argument is not that every game should withhold help indefinitely. It is that designers should leave room for players to think and should trust them with some difficulty. His feature is an opinion grounded in personal play experiences; it does not establish that all players want the same amount of challenge or provide quantitative evidence about how players respond to hints.
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Difficulty can make a solution feel earned
Puzzles that invite independent reasoning
Chandler uses Order of the Sinking Star as his central example of difficult puzzles and the pleasure he takes in eventually finding a solution. The point is not simply that a hard puzzle is better. It is that working through uncertainty can make the moment of understanding feel meaningful—something a premature nudge may diminish.
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Forgetting a tool can be part of the process
He also recounts getting stuck in Routine after forgetting how to use an ultraviolet weapon modification. He made progress after recalling what the modification was for. That is Chandler’s reported experience, not an independent test, but it illustrates how a pause can give a player room to recover knowledge and make a connection on their own.
Navigation help has the same tradeoff
Hints are not limited to spoken or written puzzle clues. Navigation cues can also narrow the player’s choices by pointing strongly toward the next action. Chandler discusses a trail in Marvel’s Wolverine and guidance in Halo: Campaign Evolved as examples of this broader design question.
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One useful way to consider these choices is to ask two things: how long the game lets a player explore before an unsolicited hint appears, and how directly its navigation aids identify the next move. A cue can help someone who is lost keep going; a cue that arrives immediately or leaves little to infer can also reduce the opportunity to find a route independently.
Let players struggle without abandoning them
The design tension is between preventing prolonged frustration and preserving the satisfaction of discovery. A game that never offers assistance risks leaving some players stuck; one that intervenes too quickly risks answering a question before the player has had a chance to ask it for themselves. Chandler argues for more patience before intervention, not for a universal rule that every player must solve every obstacle unaided.
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His closing question captures the appeal of that approach: “There’s nothing quite as exhilarating as feeling clever after feeling dumb, so why take that from me?”
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