History ThatOneLevel / PuzzleGame

** The North Star in ''KatamariDamacy'' has you making a star that is exactly 10m. And you can't easily tell how big the Katamari is. Good luck with that. Thankfully, the King is fairly forgiving.

* In the 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.

* ''VideoGame/TheWitness'' has The Challenge, the BrutalBonusLevel to end all puzzle game Brutal Bonus Levels. In a nutshell, it's a series of around a dozen or so randomized panels that all have to be solved within a ''very'' tight time limit (this in a game that, up until now, has been very much about taking your time to figure things out). This includes a set of three panels in which two panels are [[UnwinnableByDesign deliberately unsolvable]], leaving you to waste time figuring out which one can be solved and then actually solving it. And it does this ''twice''. And if you run out of time towards the end, it's a ''loooooong'' trek back to the record player to start over.
** And your reward for completing this madness? [[spoiler:The line pattern for the final video... which then turns out to be part of an ''hour-long'' environmental puzzle. And you thought the cloud in ''VideoGame/{{Braid}}'' was bad....]]

* ''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.

* ''{{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.

* ''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:

* The NintendoHard game ''ChipsChallenge'' has several of these. One of the most notable is [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Doublemaze]], which is huge, painfully confusing, and difficult to navigate.

** ''TetrisWorlds'' has "hotline", where only lines at certain altitudes matter.

*** These items include "Devil Kataoka". First of all, you need to be really big to roll him up, meaning you'll have to make time for cooldowns inbetween collecting things to avoid reaching your goal before you grow big enough. Secondly, he's standing in the middle of a shore (bringing an additional risk of accidentally rolling into the water), with snowmen at both sides - and these are almost impossible to avoid at the size you'll be at this point. Thirdly, ''after'' you've finally got him... good luck getting enough leftover non-cold stuff to finish the level. Luckily, there's an item called the Sacred Torch (also exclusive to this level), which requires you to be even bigger than this but also gives you 10000 degrees - enough to finish the level.

** 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.
** 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 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!

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* "Make Ursa Major" and "Make Taurus" in ''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.

* ''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.

**** These items include "Devil Kataoka". First of all, you need to be really big to roll him up, meaning you'll have to make some time for cooldowns inbetween collecting things to avoid reaching 10000 degrees before you grow big enough. Secondly, he's standing in the middle of a shore (bringing an additional risk of accidentally rolling into the water), with snowmen at both sides - and these are almost impossible to avoid at the size you'll be at this point. Thirdly, ''after'' you've got him... good luck getting enough leftover stuff to finish the level. Luckily, there's an item called the Sacred Torch (also exclusive to this level), which requires you to be even biggger but also gives you 10000 degrees - enough to finish the level.

** The cows and bears showed up again in a level in the sequel, ''We Love Katamari'', but this time you had to get one of either. Making it much less frustrating was a new feature added to WLK that let you restart a level if you were unhappy with your results.

* "Make Ursa Major" and "Make Taurus" in ''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 KingOfAllCosmos... 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.

* The prison break in ''GhostTrick'' is infuriating. It's carried out in near-darkness (unless you're in the ghost world, where time stands still) and is both a stealth and escort mission, made doubly annoying due to the fact that it portrays a three-dimensional cutaway of the building in a two-dimensional perspective. It's hard to know, in one area, that you need to [[spoiler: have Jowd hide behind the stairs]] because you can't even tell that area is accessible.
** If you don't know that [[spoiler: Jowd can hide behind the stairs]], try [[GuideDangIt figuring out without a guide that]] [[spoiler: Jowd isn't supposed to go up the stairs normally, but has to jump up and go through a grate that one of the guards would be hiding in had you not opened it and made him fall by this point]].
*** This example is actually justified seeing as how Jowd mentions this, should you fail at getting him up the first time. He tells you [[spoiler:that maybe the stairs are not the way to do it and that you should look for another way up]]. Seeing as how to grate is the only other way upwards its not THAT hard to work out what to do.

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** The Pressure Exchange Chamber after [[spoiler:Clover basically says ScrewThisImOuttaHere and leaves you and Tenmyouji stranded in the chamber,]] because what you have to do and how you have to do it to get out isn't very clear. Also the puzzle on the door to get in and out of it requires a very steady hand in order to connect the dots, and the touch screen can be rather finicky.

** Opening the pod room door in the Treatment Center requires you to play a game of Mastermind, except you only get ten chances to guess the password ''and it's randomized after those ten attempts''.

* ''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 games. And yeah, you can use powerups but even if you have money/game coins to buy them, they lower your score.

** 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. The majority of the level is now blocked off. 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.

** 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).

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