Have You Played... Armadillo Run?
Before physics was commonplace
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
Long before physics games were commonplace, Armadillo Run [official site] offered creative puzzles in which you could build bridges, pulleys and, with enough practice, just about anything.
The aim is to get an armadillo to a particular point in 2D space and then keep it there for a few seconds. The challenge is that levels are often blank bar your goal, the armadillo, and perhaps a few guiding pegs. So you set to work: hanging rope between the pegs, plopping down cogs and platforms, experimenting with elastic bands, and trying to work out if you can find a use for rockets.
Level after level, the difficulty increases, but there's never only a single fixed solution. The joy is in the creativity, and even if you get stuck you can have lots of fun just building things, starting the simulation, and watching the chaos play out. And if you get good, the sky's the limit. Or maybe not even the sky.