Player Nudge/Playing With

Basic Trope: The game provides hints to a stuck player about some puzzle or battle they're struggling with.

Straight: If the hero of Troparadise dies during a Puzzle Boss battle, the Waif Prophet Velvet appears before the Game Over screen and reminds them "As the prophecy states, only the Holy Blade Edin can destroy Llortro."
Exaggerated: Velvet appears every time the hero dies to offer advice and reminders about what the hero should be doing.
Justified: Velvet is established as a powerful Seer who shares a connection with the hero and knows how everything should play out.
Inverted: ... but Velvet turns out to be an Unreliable Narrator and, if only for sake of the story, the hint is wrong and leads the hero astray.
Subverted: Velvet appears, but she just taunts the hero about how he's failed. "Maybe if you were smarter you could solve this puzzle."
Double Subverted: ...Unless the hero dies enough times to trigger the game's "pity hint" mode.
Parodied: "Brave Hero, you've died such a miraculously hilarious number of times, I, Velvet, shall solve the puzzle FOR YOU."
- "Excuse me, Mrs. Seer? I forgot the hint. And died. Can you run it past me one more time please?"
Deconstructed: The hero questions his journey if it can be so easily foretold in a prophecy and begins to wonder if anything he does matters if he's fated to do it anyway.
Reconstructed: ... but Velvet's last words of advice for the hero is that he should never ever give up, and though he controls his own actions, destiny will see him to a happy end.
Zig Zagged: Hero dies. Velvet gives him advice. The hero becomes dependent on the hints. Eventually Velvet becomes fed up with his constant, and sometimes voluntary deaths and stops helping him. Unable to move on, the Hero becomes stuck. Taking pity on the Hero, Velvet decides once again to help him. The Hero then decides he must learn to overcome his dependency and stops taking hints. Then he pushes himself too hard. He refuses hints, even when he might need them. Velvet convinces the Hero that the occasional hint is okay. He accepts.
Averted: No Hints. Try Nintendo Power.
Enforced: Beta testers had trouble figuring out certain solutions, so the programmers decided to add these extra hints for players.
Lampshaded: "Shouldn't I learn how to do this myself?"
- "Why didn't you tell me that before I died?"
Invoked: ALL ONLINE WALKTHROUGHS
Defied: Any player who decides to not read the hints because he wants the satisfaction of figuring it out himself intentionally defies this trope.
Discussed: "Plus, where would you be without my hints, Brave Hero? Still in the Water Temple, That's where."
Conversed: "Yes, Interviewer-man, we're aware of the obscene number of player hint's in my company's new game. We were hoping the make the game more accessible to the casual gamer."
Plotted A Good Waste: While this appears to be just the game's way of nudging players in the right direction, it's actually setting up The Reveal that Velvet is more powerful than she lets on, and is manipulating the hero for her own ends. After this reveal, the player no longer recieves any hints, for obvious reasons (though Velvet may engage in Evil Gloating on the Game Over screen instead).
Played For Laughs: Velvet prefaces all of her post-death hints with "You idiot, why didn't you just..."
Played For Drama: The hint is presented as part of a Bad End, with Velvet lamenting that the prophecy did not come to pass, because she did not foresee that the hero wouldn't do what was required of them.

Back to Player Nudge.