> We live in a time where innocently surfing the web can result in seeing a single screenshot and completely ruining a game

A game where seeing a single screenshot ruins the experience wasn't very substantial to begin with.

> Because information equals progress in this genre, there’s typically no way to brute force the path forward whenever you find yourself truly stuck.

Except that is almost always possible - games by their very nature are usually very restricted in what you can do which makes exploration of all possible options possible. But usually better would be trying to reason about the problem. Looking up outside help is and has always been equivalent to giving up - which is fine if you don't want to solve the puzzle but definitely not needed to progress if you are patient.