It’s not exactly the same, but Zen Puzzle Garden (https://www.lexaloffle.com/zen.php) has been around since the 90s.
Yeah, I came up with the original idea entirely independently back in 2023 (https://gwern.net/idea#zen-sand-garden-puzzle-game) and postponed it until LLMs could code it up for me (ie. now), and Claude/ChatGPT turned that up as prior art while researching it: https://gwern.net/doc/design/2026-10-03-gwern-samon.html#mec...
ZPG winds up not being as interesting, I think, because it doesn't figure out how to take the core idea of raking and twist it into more interesting puzzles, which is the classic puzzle approach: find a clean core mechanic, and then escalate on it.
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Yeah, I came up with the original idea entirely independently back in 2023 (https://gwern.net/idea#zen-sand-garden-puzzle-game) and postponed it until LLMs could code it up for me (ie. now), and Claude/ChatGPT turned that up as prior art while researching it: https://gwern.net/doc/design/2026-10-03-gwern-samon.html#mec...
ZPG winds up not being as interesting, I think, because it doesn't figure out how to take the core idea of raking and twist it into more interesting puzzles, which is the classic puzzle approach: find a clean core mechanic, and then escalate on it.