Cracking the Cryptic has shown me the wonders of variant sudoku. My personal favorite variant is thermo. Their GAS series is a good introduction, or jump right in at logic masters
I can't remember the last time I played. Never really liked the aesthetics of the windows versions after 7. If I'm in the mood I use https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/mines.html That version never requires guessing. To give myself a challenge I try to do it without flagging the mines.
Edit: realized its the xp version I liked, 7 was ugly.
That's an interesting take on it. I wonder if that version is "solved". You reminded me of a 3d version on a really old version of windows. https://tcrf.net/TicTactics