It's not cheating if you write the video game solver yourself

I’ve written state space brute force solvers for some of the puzzles in Ittle Dew too. It is about as much fun as this describes. :)

I’ve used planners (which I guess puts me closer to the cheating side than the non-cheating side) to solve puzzles in the Talos Principle before. As with the author here, I always find that I figure out how to solve the puzzle manually while modelling it; but this process really gives you a deeper appreciation of the puzzle’s design.