> However, most levels can be expressed as a few intermediate goals

I think generally the whole thing with puzzle games is that you have to determine the “right” intermediate goals. In fact, the naive intermediate goals are often entirely wrong!

A canonical sokoban-like inversion might be where you have to push two blocks into goal areas. You might think “ok, push one block into its goal area and then push another into it.”

But many of these games will have mechanisms meaning you would first want to push one block into its goal, then undo that for some reason (it might activate some extra functionality) push the other block, and then finally go back and do the thing.

There’s always weird tricks that mean that you’re going to walk backwards before walking forwards. I don’t think it’s impossible for these things to stumble into it, though. Just might spin a lot of cycles to get there (humans do too I guess)