Gold Machine

Every cube in the pile can leave in exactly one direction, and almost none of them can leave yet. That single rule is the whole of this three-dimensional puzzle, where a cursed monument of weathered stone and dark iron stands in the fog and has to be dismantled to the last piece. You orbit it with a drag, close in with a pinch, and hunt for the cubes whose escape route is genuinely open. What looks like a solid wall from one angle turns out to be full of clear lanes from another, which is why the camera matters as much as the tapping.
Progress is measured in wasted effort. A block with an open corridor slides out the moment you touch it; a buried one wobbles and does nothing except add to your tally. Because taking a piece from the centre never brings the rest down, the structure stays intact while its interior slowly opens, and the puzzle becomes a chain of dependencies you unwind from the outside inward. Finish with no more taps than there were cubes and the contract is rated at full marks, so the calm hunter scores higher than the quick one.
Twenty monuments line a hand-drawn trail, growing from a small stack of a dozen cubes to towers four cells across and eight high, with a heavier structure guarding every fifth stage. A separate endless hunt swaps the fixed puzzle for a countdown: each cube you release returns a little time, layers keep dropping onto the pile faster than you can strip them away, and an unbroken run of clean taps pushes the score upward until the clock finally empties.
Behind the stone there is reading for anyone who wants it, a bestiary that grows one entry per cleared stage with accounts of drowned dead in the shallows, antlered lords of the old grove, shrieking cliff-dwellers, and creatures that wear a stranger's face, along with the oil, sign, or trick that fells each of them. A quiz pulls only from creatures you have met and stops at the first wrong answer, so a long streak is worth real pride. Trophies, a logbook of past hunts, and a page of totals round it out. It suits short sittings and long ones alike.