Player Punch/Video Games/Puzzle Game

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Examples of Player Punches in Puzzle Games include:

  • Stray Souls Dollhouse Story. The main character Danielle frees the clown, who promises to free Sam, who's locked in a cage, and she's just about to be reunited... when the clown pushes her in and it turns out to be a mannequin. That's pretty harsh...
  • The defenseless, innocent, immobile, inanimate Companion Cube from Portal.
    • Worse (especially for players who didn't get attached to the cube, or had already given up on empathy when you have to use it to block a plasma ball) is the screams of the cheerily curious little Curiosity Core as it meets the same fate as the Companion Cube.

Ooh, what's thatYAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

  • Subverted early on in Portal 2: GLaDOS crushes Wheatley, the friendly, chatty, funny little personality core that was helping you navigate to freedom through the ruins of the Enrichment Center. Being an Aperture robot, he wasn't exactly attentive to your risks, and he very suddenly pops back up in Chapter 3 to help you out again, with a cracked lense and twitching spark now and then but perfectly fine otherwise. But the real subversion kicks in when he becomes corrupt and villainous for the second half of the game, stopping your escape elevator mid-ascension. Given how he's less than compassionate even when he was helping you, his eventual fate doesn't fall into this category.
    • Played very straight with the dear old Companion Cube in Chapter 2 though, served with a hearty side of chain yanking. It's given no introduction, but players of the first game recognize it as their dear friend, and then...it disintegrates the second you pick it up. GLaDOS taunts you about it as she replaces it with a new Companion Cube, which she also destroys, so she can taunt you again with how very expendable the Cube is as she summons a third one you can actually use. Then the Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grill in that chamber just-so-happens to be broken, so you can even smuggle the Companion Cube out of the chamber...only for GLaDOS to destroy it as you step in the elevator.
      • Made worse when GLaDOS says that the Companion Cubes do have a rudimentary intelligence, and aren't just inanimate objects.
    • The turrets. Oh god, the turrets. They have adorable voices, but you are often forced to kill them. As you kill them, they will say things like "I don't blame you" or "Good night" just to make you feel worse about yourself.
      • And if that isn't bad enough, look at the sequel. On the Turret Redemption Line, you can save a still-functioning turret, but if you try to take it into the next room, it disintegrates. When the defective turrets are flung into the incinerator, you can stand in front of it and save them, for which they will be joyful and say "Let's get this started! All right!" However, they explode shortly after you place them on the ground. Finally, when you switch it so the working turrets get flung into the incinerator instead of the defective ones, they shout things like, "But I did everything you aaaaaaasked!" and "WheeeeeeOH NO!" You also later get to see them in the moment they get crushed in between gears, still shouting.
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