At this point there isn't much I can say that hasn't been said already, so instead I'd like to point you and anyone who might be interested in making a puzzle game to a very helpful guide to creating these kind of physics-based puzzles (It's for Portal 2 but a lot of the same principles still apply) https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1609136246
For anyone who doesn't have time to read through it all, I'll give the basics here:
- Puzzles should be solved non-linearly with the player reusing elements in multiple different ways to solve the puzzle
- All of the elements of a puzzle should be made clear to the player from the start
- The player should never be put in a situation where they are forced to manually restart the puzzle
- Each element presented to the player must be used at least once in order to solve the puzzle
- Players should not be rewarded for deviating from the puzzle's intended solution by exploiting design flaws
- When possible, design flaws should be fixed seamlessly without the addition of extraneous puzzle elements
I feel like I should speak on point 2 because I don't necessarily agree with it, in that I feel more complex puzzles can give the player short term goals and long term goals, and the elements required to accomplish the long term goals can be obscured as long as the elements of the short term goals are made clear. Metroidvanias are an excellent example of this because they scatter their puzzle elements across the map, so when the player finds a water gun they'll think "hey, maybe I can use this to put out that fire that was blocking my way before."
Oddly enough, the guide ends with a link to the GMTK video on puzzles. It's a small world.