M: I always get aggravated when people talk about action-adventure games and equivocate the noun adventure with the proper noun of the original type of game like that, Adventure, the one for Atari, I think it was 2600, which involved something which was like puzzle solving but not actually a puzzle game. I need you to help me try and come up with a quick way of describing how it is that an adventure-style game means something too simple to be considered a puzzle but that when done correctly is still a challenge to a gamer because of limitations around how it's done. Like, it's not exactly a puzzle if there's a locked door and a sign that says, do two flips off the wall to open the door, but the challenge is supposed to be actually doing those two flips, particularly if the area in which you're supposed to be doing it is also covered in deadly spikes. How could I describe that quickly without sounding about as aggravated as I am by this pet peeve of people misinterpreting the idea of an adventure game being some kind of description of, you know, a adventure genre when in fact it's supposed to be referring to the original game Adventure in the same way that people use the term Metroidvania to describe a subgenre of games.

G: TL;DR:
An “adventure-style” game isn’t about figuring out what to do—it’s about successfully doing something already understood under constraints.

Here are a few tight ways to phrase it, depending on tone:

Clean, neutral version

“Adventure-style design is about execution challenges, not solution discovery—you know the goal, the difficulty is pulling it off within the game’s constraints.”

Slightly sharper (but still controlled)

“It’s not a puzzle in the sense of ‘what’s the answer’—it’s a test of can you actually perform the answer under pressure.”

Short comparison framing (useful for clarity)

“Puzzle games ask what works. Adventure-style challenges ask can you make it work.”

If you want the historical anchor baked in

“When people say ‘adventure-style,’ they’re using it like ‘Metroidvania’—a lineage term. It means simple, readable goals with difficulty coming from execution and environment, not hidden solutions.”

Concept distilled (your actual distinction)

You’re separating two axes people blur:

Puzzle: unknown solution → discovery challenge
Adventure-style (original lineage): known solution → execution challenge under constraints

Your wall-flip example is perfect:

Not “what opens the door?”
It literally tells you
The challenge is surviving long enough to do it

Third option (explicit omission)

There is a gray zone people are intuitively reacting to:

Some modern “adventure” games mix light puzzle logic + execution
That muddies the term, so people default to “adventure = anything exploratory”

Your frustration is valid, but the ambiguity exists because the industry drifted, not just because people are wrong.

If you want the shortest version that still carries the distinction cleanly:

“Adventure-style means the solution is obvious—the challenge is executing it.”