History ThatOneLevel / PuzzleGame

* Level 8-2 from ''VideoGame/{{Zuma}}'' is the third version of the Altar of Tlaloc map, which wasn't too bad before, except now you're working with all six colors and a longer starting chain on a map with a laughably short marble track (about 25% of which can't be hit because it's ''FakeDifficulty under the playfield''.) Players have entered the stage with a full set of extra frogs and lost every single one.

* ''VideoGame/GhostTrick''

* ''VideoGame/{{Repton}}'' is a fairly straightforward game, certainly pretty easy by the standards set by later games in the series, until you reach the eleventh level, "Giant clam". On this level you have to collect diamonds while being pursued simultaneously by three monsters; their unpredictable movement means that often when you turn a corner to get away from one, the others will now be ahead of you. There are no rocks provided to kill the monsters, and every diamond in the field must be taken before leaving that area. Oh, and when you exit the area, a rock blocks it off, so the lower area must then be completed without losing a life.
* ''VideoGame/TetrisTheGrandMaster 3'' brings us Sakura mode, which has stages that can become nearly {{Unwinnable}} as a result of a single misplaced piece. Of note are the following stages:
** Stage 8 -- Two horizontal U-shaped structures that have gems on their longer sides. In addition to that, the X-Ray item, which renders the playfield invisible save for a line that sweeps horizontally across the field activating every other piece.
** Stage 15 -- A tall structure shaped somewhat like an hourglass. Unless you make some creative piece placements, you may find yourself needing to do the annoying "soft-drop the piece carefully then wait until it's at the right height" technique to slip pieces into the two overhangs. One mistake in placing pieces in those overhangs and you may as well skip to the next stage.
** Stage 16 -- The stage itself isn't hard. The killer here is the Roll Roll item, which actives every third piece and causes your current piece to rotate automatically every split second. If you just rush through this stage, you'll have misrotated pieces foiling your run.
** Almost all of the [[BonusStage extra stages]] count. To begin with, there's stage [=EX3=], which gives you double-sized pieces to work with. Unfortunately, the developers neglected to also double the number of cells that a piece moves (to accommodate their increased size), not unlike the case with [=TGM1=]'s Big mode, and [[http://tinyurl.com/bigmode if you lock a piece in an odd-numbered column, you'll end up with a gap that is completely impossible to fill up.]]
** ''VideoGame/TetrisWorlds'' has "hotline", where only lines at certain altitudes matter.
* ''VideoGame/JewelQuest'': The monkey challenges. Here, not only do you have to turn all of the squares on the board gold, but you also have to put monkey relics in all of the available cages. The catch? Match up any three or more monkey relics, and whatever gold spaces they occupy are turned back to brown (meaning you'll have to turn them back, again), and they can be matched up with monkeys already in the cages, undoing all your hard work.
* Level 8-2 from ''{{VideoGame/Zuma}}'' is the third version of the Altar of Tlaloc map, which wasn't too bad before, except now you're working with all six colors and a longer starting chain on a map with a laughably short marble track (about 25% of which can't be hit because it's ''FakeDifficulty under the playfield''.) Players have entered the stage with a full set of extra frogs and lost every single one.

* In the online game [[http://www.k2xl.com/games/psychopath/index2.php Psychopath]] it's Level 55, Spaceship. The object of this game is to reach an exit in the given number of moves, which will always be the fewest possible. Spaceship tortures the player with a dozen possible approaches that fall ''just'' short, making it very hard to choose the correct approach. ''Even the level's creator'' originally set it to 221 moves -- then someone else pointed out that it can be done in 219, so now, of course, that's required.
* The NintendoHard game ''VideoGame/ChipsChallenge'' has several of these.
** One of the most notable is [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Doublemaze]], which is huge, painfully confusing, and difficult to navigate. Tellingly, one of the passwords surreptitiously marked in Level 34 takes you to the ''level after this one'', in the very likely event you cannot stand this one.
** Another notable level is the aptly named [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin "Totally Unfair"]]. Earlier you did a level named "Totally Fair", in which you had to lure a teeth (which will always move 1 square towards you if they can) through a maze and onto a brown button. It was actually a pretty easy level. Then later on comes Totally Unfair, which is [[HardModeFiller the exact same level, with 2 distinct differences]]: 1. You cannot see the teeth or the maze the teeth has to move through. 2. You have only ''60 seconds'' to complete the level this time around. How on earth are you supposed to beat this level when you can't even see the maze or the teeth? By memorizing the EXACT pattern of the maze and the movements the teeth have to make to get through it, and timing your movement accordingly outside of the maze so that the teeth will still attempt to chase you through it, even though you're multiple screens away. Worse, there are bear traps all over the maze, so if you make any type of mistake, including not timing said movements EXACTLY right, the teeth will be stuck, and you'll have to restart.
** Then you have "Icedeath", which is TrialAndErrorGameplay taken to its logical extreme, the painfully tedious block puzzles such as "On the Rocks" and "Writer's Block", and "Spirals", which can end up nigh-unwinnable based on which version of the game you're playing due to a GameBreakingBug in the level design that screws with the walkers' movement pattern. The Steam remake appears to be fully aware of which levels fall under this trope, giving you achievements for completing each one.
** The sequel is even more prone to these thanks to all of the new puzzle mechanics involved. One of the most insidious showstoppers is "The Village", where you must guide a group of dispersed Chip clones to various objects and switches scattered around the area in order to allow your Chip to escape to the exit. The clones all move at the same time, meaning a valid move for one can spell death for another, and the order in which you must carry out these tasks is convoluted at best and seems designed to kill the Chip clones as quickly as possible. If you kill too many, the level becomes impossible to solve, meaning a restart from the very beginning. Have fun!

* ''VideoGame/AngryBirds'': Any level requiring precise timing or aiming can turn into this. Especially in the "Friends" version, where you want to score higher than your friends. Sometimes, killing the pigs is easy, but taking out enough debris with them to get a top score is hard. Plus, some levels in that version work best on Facebook, leaving mobile players wanting to hurl their phone/tablet across the room. Oh yeah, and the aimer in most versions is a powerup in "Friends", rather than a standard feature. It also doesn't help that there are projectiles flying at the birds in some levels of most games. And yeah, you can use powerups but even if you have money/game coins to buy them, they lower your score.
* ''Dynomite!'' has "Castle Dynomite". It's level 28 in the deluxe version and 18 in the online version, and despite not being the final level (the two versions contain 30 and 20 levels respectively), it is by ''far'' the most difficult. At the start of the level, you must be ''extremely'' careful with your aim, because you need every egg of the right color in the right place to clear out the rocks at the top of the "castle". Once you have cleared out the top three clusters of rocks, the level gets a little easier, but things can still go oh-so-horribly wrong if you're not good at ricocheting eggs around ''another'' cluster of rocks...which, by the way, is ''stuck to the bottom'' of the level so you ''cannot clear it out'', so it not only gets in your way but also counts as eggs for the purpose of checking the warning line, so even if the ceiling is still 3 rows away from the warning line, you will lose if you don't immediately finish the level. This is one level where it is recommended to [[SaveScumming save]] not only before but ''during'' the level, since if you don't clear out the eggs at the bottom and fail the second half, you have to start all over from the "every egg needs to go in a specific place" first half. The two levels that follow Castle Dynomite are hard, but they pale in comparison to this.
* ''Icebreaker: A Viking Journey'' features "Between the Lines", the level you access in Hammerfest after you rescue the Cutting Master and achieved 20 Par goals. The Par for this level is 4 cuts of ice. Now, this may seem [[http://www.angrybirdsnest.com/icebreaker-hammerfest-level-p3-between-the-lines/ manageable on a 4:3 screen]], but when played on a 16:9 screen it's impossible.
* ''VideoGame/{{Antichamber}}'': ''Stairway to Heaven'', ironically, is one of the rooms you'll end up hating the most; not because of its difficulty, but because many different puzzles around the game lead to it (it's quite the inverse of a HubLevel: it has a lot of different entries, but not many exits). It can be very frustrating to solve a puzzle believing you're going to unlock a new zone, only to discover you're again in the same room where you've already been lots of times. Worse yet, once you've seen the room's glowing balls, and therefore realised where you're now, it's too late to go back: the passage you came from has already disappeared, meaning you have to use the Escape button to come back there.
* The 55th level of ''VideoGame/BallRevamped IV: Amplitude'', "Long Fuse and Run". You have to light the fuse and dodge lasers for roughly 15 seconds while waiting for it to burn. Oh, and the laser guns don't stop firing once the obstacle has been blown up. The fact that level 56's level select code is "painful" [[LampshadeHanging may not be a coincidence]].

* Videogame/{{Quadrax}}, the BlockPuzzle game, has plenty of these thanks to having nine entries, even considering the [[NintendoHard difficulty of the later games]]:
** ''Quadrax III'' and its level 44. You'll be stuck there for a long time before getting that last block where you need it.
** ''Quadrax IV'' has 'Anubis', a MarathonLevel that takes a lot of coordination. An early hard level blocking most of players is level 17 despite the hint scroll describing exactly the trick you need to perform.
** ''Quadrax V'': level 58, a MarathonLevel that takes a lot of coordination and also needs almost half an hour to solve, but finding out solution will take ''much'' longer. 'Anubis' is only a slap on wrist compared to this one. The same game has also level 34 titled '[[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Crane Opener]]', which is played only with one character but is difficult due to somewhat original use of new mechanics, and level 69, which is level 89 from previous game but with CuttingTheKnot option removed, so you'll need to finish it the ''hard'' way in this game.
** ''Quadrax VII'' has a lot of these by courtesy of at this moment the game basically stopping being oriented at casual gamers, but level 73 really takes the cake. So much one can spend dozen of hours there and not knowing what to do.
** ''Quadrax X'': Level 70 because of possibility to change four basic blocks available in the game into any type you want, but only two possible combinations actually working. Level 84 isn't easy either because of shadowy main trick and it being difficult to perform.
** ''Quadrax Neverending'' : Level 6, which even ''the tester'' of the game wasn't able to finish without author's help, and level 20, which is MarathonLevel of all Marathon Levels (and longest Quadrax level to date), has difficult to find out objective, and it isn't that much easier even when you know what to do.
* ''VideoGame/SutteHakkun'' may as well be notorious for [[NintendoHard insane difficulty]] later on, but some stages are absolute ''outliers:''
** Stage 5-7 involves making a basic vertical zig-zag path through the stage to get to the shard far out of reach at the start of the level. The catch? Even ONE mistake will ''cost you.'' '''''Dearly.''''' If you don't place the blocks in the EXACT spots (one placement forcing you to balance Hakkun over a bottomless pit) [[UnwinnableByDesign you will be GUARANTEED to either get stuck or die from the pit.]]
** Stage 5-10 would be super simple if it weren't for the damned bottomless pit and the [[SomeDexterityRequired ridiculous maneuver]] you'll have to pull off at the start of the stage. As soon as you jump down the hole, you need to quickly inhale two blocks from the right and spit them out on the left. If you [[DamnYouMuscleMemory succumb to pattern following]] and do the same for the third block, you will either get yourself stuck or waste points having to jump and inhale it again (And if you forget to fill it with red paint, you're screwed.) The rest of the stage involves extremely precise block placement over a gaping chasm, with a ''ceiling covering the initial jump,'' meaning that slamming your head into the ceiling and falling into the pit is also possible.
** Stage 10-7 is 5-10's older brother. The same tactic used at the start of 5-10 must be used halfway into this stage. Screw it up and either [[FailureIsTheOnlyOption get stuck or say hello to the pit.]] If you don't screw up, then the rest of the stage is a still-very-tricky maneuver through downward-facing one-way walls, but at least it's easier than the section before it. [[SaveScumming Better quicksave!]]
* ''Videogame/HardspaceShipbreaker:'' Salvage Runner Geckos are the most hated ships in the game (as of August 2021). The big problem with the thing is its cargo hold, which is full of random salvage of the sort you'd find across all other ships. Including, of course, highly dangerous and fragile things like coolant/fuel tanks, thrusters, terminals and hydroponics cabinets, among other things that have given you grief before getting to that point. The cargo hold also shares pressurization with the crawlspace, thus leaving it isolated only by the ship's main airlock. And by the time you get clearance to salvage this class of ship, Atmosphere Regulators (the only thing that lets you depressurize a space without heavy winds or even ExplosiveDecompression) often spawn broken and unusable, and in Salvage Runners are ''especially'' prone to doing so. As a result, before you can even depressurize the vessel and get to the hull you must slowly pull things out of the cargo hold one by one and stuff them into the airlock before breaching the ship, or outright cycle them out to get them in the barge if they won't all fit. And if there's an Environmental Control Unit in the back, you're screwed, because it won't fit in there. And if you don't do this tedious work or screw up, and breach the cargo hold, all the cargo will smash around and cause a chain reaction of explosions that will reduce the whole place to worthless scrap. Thus, most players just avoid Salvage Runner Geckos by the time they get clearance.

** Then you have "Icedeath", which is TrialAndErrorGameplay [[UpToEleven taken to its logical extreme]], the painfully tedious block puzzles such as "On the Rocks" and "Writer's Block", and "Spirals", which can end up nigh-{{Unwinnable}} based on which version of the game you're playing due to a GameBreakingBug in the level design that screws with the walkers' movement pattern. The Steam remake appears to be fully aware of which levels fall under this trope, giving you achievements for completing each one.

* "Make Ursa Major" and "Make Taurus" in ''VideoGame/KatamariDamacy''. Both levels have as their requirement that you pick up exactly one of a given type of item--bear for Ursa Major and cow for Taurus. While any one will do, in order to get the best score possible (and avoid getting mocked by the King), you want the biggest one you can get. The problem is that you're being judged by the original King of All Cosmos... and he is a fricking idiot. He counts statues of bears or cows (and in the latter case, milk cartons) as appropriate items. Nothing is more frustrating than spending five minutes building the Katamari to the right size, rolling towards the giant brown bear... and then bumping a bear cub and getting yanked out of the level. And then insulted by the King.

*** It helps to look at the size charts before going into this level. Once your Katamari is large enough to roll up a Regular Tree, you'll know you're very close to 10m.
** In ''Beautiful Katamari'' it gets worse, with the Roller Roaster. Your goal is to roll up hot stuff to hit 10,000 degrees. Problem is, it's far too easy to go careening into big bunches of what the level considers "cold" stuff, and you lose automatically if your katamari "freezes" (0 degrees). And those fire extinguishers... brrrr.

** The campfire level from ''We Love Katamari'' also appearing in Katamari Forever. You must touch something EVERY FREAKING SECOND or your flame fizzles out in very short order. The objects don't add much fuel to your fire, and if you roll even a LITTLE into the water, you are extinguished immediately. That and Roller Roaster were two levels that a lot of gamers would have preferred to keep in the past.
*** Not to mention all the OTHER [[ThatOneLevel That One Levels]] that came back... Roller Roaster, the bear/cow level (AGAIN), THREE size challenges, a renamed version of Make a Star 4 that only gives you FIVE minutes... it's like they were trying to create [[NintendoHard "That One Level: The Game"]].

* ''VideoGame/TheEscapists''
** HMP Irongate, and to a lesser extent San Pancho. San Pancho introduces landmines and jeeps, so even if you try to dig across the former, you'll get caught by the latter. It also happens to have double thick walls, so you should have upgraded your pickaxe to sturdy if you want to escape. HMP Irongate is even more painful; It combines cameras and contraband detectors with Guard Towers and stun batons, so doing anything wrong will essentially instantly kill you.

** There is a trick to make this level much easier. It won't help you with the lower area, and costs you one life, but it makes the upper area much, much easier. When the level starts, run immediately to the lower area entrance. When you finish it, make sure the three monsters are stuck right behind that boulder. Take the last diamond and lose one life. The monsters are now stuck and you can pick up all the remaining diamonds without too much hassle.

* Several of the gimmick levels for the ''VideoGame/JewelQuest'' games can arguably be this, but there is no denying the monkey challenges. Here, not only do you have to turn all of the squares on the board gold, but you also have to put monkey relics in all of the available cages. The catch? Match up any three or more monkey relics, and whatever gold spaces they occupy are turned back to brown (meaning you'll have to turn them back, again), and they can be matched up with monkeys already in the cages, undoing all your hard work.

* The ''VideoGame/{{N}}'' game has ''several'' of these. You play as a ninja who has to collect a blue block to switch open the exit door. Simple right? Now try doing that while avoiding the [[MissileLockOn missiles]], [[ElectricTorture electric robots that follow you]], [[EnergyWeapon the lasers]], [[StuffBlowingUp and the mines]]. Oh, and you [[SpontaneousHumanCombustion blow up and die]] if you run out of time. Considering the fact that there are at least '''500''' levels in this game, there's no doubt that at least ten of them will piss you off to no end.

* ''VideoGame/{{Tetrisphere}}'''s Hide n' Seek mode has any level with the rare Crystal Tower rules. Tower rules task you with destroying\moving all the blocks around a tower to expose the picture underneath. Crystal Tower is much the same, except now the tower breaks if you move a block into it, or if any block is destroyed nearby. Normally you have 3 lives but breaking the tower is an automatic loss.

* The NintendoHard game ''VideoGame/ChipsChallenge'' has several of these. One of the most notable is [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Doublemaze]], which is huge, painfully confusing, and difficult to navigate.
** Another notable level is the aptly named [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin "Totally Unfair"]]. Earlier you did a level named "Totally Fair", in which you had to lure a teeth (which will always move 1 square towards you if they can) through a maze and onto a brown button. It was actually a pretty easy level. Then later on comes Totally Unfair, which is the exact same level, with 2 distinct differences: 1. You cannot see the teeth or the maze the teeth has to move through. 2. You have only ''60 seconds'' to complete the level this time around. How on earth are you supposed to beat this level when you can't even see the maze or the teeth? By memorizing the EXACT pattern of the maze and the movements the teeth have to make to get through it, and timing your movement accordingly outside of the maze so that the teeth will still attempt to chase you through it, even though you're multiple screens away. Did I mention there are bear traps all over the maze? If you make any type of mistake, including not timing said movements EXACTLY right, the teeth will be stuck, and you'll have to restart.

* ''Videogame/HardspaceShipbreaker:'' Salvage Runner Geckos are the most hated ships in the game (as of August 2021). The big problem with the thing is its cargo hold, which is full of random salvage of the sort you'd find across all other ships. Including, of course, highly dangerous and fragile things like coolant/fuel tanks, thrusters, terminals and hydroponics cabinets, among other things that have given you grief before getting to that point. The cargo hold also shares pressurization with the crawlspace, thus leaving it isolated only by the ship's main airlock. And by the time you get clearance to salvage this class of ship, Atmosphere Regulators (the only thing that lets you depressurize a space without heavy winds or even ExplosiveDecompression) often spawn broken and unusable, and in Salvage Runners are ''especially'' prone to doing so. As a result, before you can even depressurize the vessel and get to the hull you must slowly pull things out of the cargo hold one by one and stuff them into the airlock before breaching the ship, or outright cycle them out to get them in the barge if they won't all fit. And if there's an Environmental Control Unit in the back, you're screwed, because it won't fit in there. And if you don't do this tedious work or screw up, and breach the cargo hold, all the cargo will smash around and cause a chain reaction of explosions that will reduce the whole place to worthless scrap. Thus, most players just avoid Salvage Runner Geckos by the time they get clearance.

** Stage 10-7 is 5-10's older brother. The same tactic used at the start of 5-10 must be used halfway into this stage. Screw it up and either [[FailureIsTheOnlyOption get stuck or say hello to the pit.]] If you don't screw up, then the rest of the stage is a still-very-tricky maneuver through downward-facing one-way walls, but at least it's easier than the section before it. [[SaveScumming Better quicksave!]]

* The ''VideoGame/{{N}}'' game has ''several'' of these. You play as a ninja who has to collect a blue block to switch open the exit door. Simple right? Now try doing that while avoiding the [[MissileLockOn missiles]], [[ElectricTorture electric robots that follow you]], [[FrickinLaserBeams the lasers]], [[StuffBlowingUp and the mines]]. Oh, and you [[SpontaneousHumanCombustion blow up and die]] if you run out of time. Considering the fact that there are at least '''500''' levels in this game, there's no doubt that at least ten of them will piss you off to no end.

In games of puzzles, these stand out for being [[ThatOneLevel the most frustrating]]. Expect [[MoonLogicPuzzle moon logic]] and [[GuideDangIt confusion]].

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* In the ''VideoGame/KatamariDamacy'' clone ''The Wonderful End Of The World'', the ''Cafe Internets'' level is significantly harder to get a successful score than any other level in the game. It's easy to become ''just'' large enough to make navigating the level practically impossible.

** Stage 10-7 is 5-10's older brother. The same tactic used at the start of 5-10 must be used halfway into this stage. Screw it up and either [[FailureIsTheOnlyOption get stuck or say hello to the pit.]] If you don't screw up, then the rest of the stage is a still-very-tricky maneuver through downward-facing one-way walls, but at least it's easier than the section before it. [[SaveScumming Better quicksave!]]

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[[quoteright:125:[[VideoGame/HeartStar https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tvtropes_guidedangit_7519.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:125:[[ThisIsGonnaSuck Well, this is going to be]] ''[[ThisIsGonnaSuck fun.]]'']]

* The ''N'' game has ''several'' of these. You play as a ninja who has to collect a blue block to switch open the exit door. Simple right? Now try doing that while avoiding the [[MissileLockOn missiles]], [[ElectricTorture electric robots that follow you]], [[FrickinLaserBeams the lasers]], [[StuffBlowingUp and the mines]]. Oh, and you [[SpontaneousHumanCombustion blow up and die]] if you run out of time. Considering the fact that there are at least '''500''' levels in this game, there's no doubt that at least ten of them will piss you off to no end.

* The slow-tempo stages of the ''{{Lumines}}'' series. Depending on how filled with blocks your screen is when you get to them, they can either be these or chances to milk craptons of points. ''Lumines II'' is quite nasty with these kinds of levels, putting slow levels right before the last stage of each of the game's Challenge modes. In fact, one stage that was in the original had its line speed [[FakeDifficulty halved]] for ''II''.

* Several of the gimmick levels for the ''JewelQuest'' games can arguably be this, but there is no denying the monkey challenges. Here, not only do you have to turn all of the squares on the board gold, but you also have to put monkey relics in all of the available cages. The catch? Match up any three or more monkey relics, and whatever gold spaces they occupy are turned back to brown (meaning you'll have to turn them back, again), and they can be matched up with monkeys already in the cages, undoing all your hard work.