[fwipsy]

I expected the horse to move one tile for each block you placed. I had an elaborate plan to lure it towards one exit and then close it at the last minute... Nope!

[Biganon]

John Conway studied similar problems

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_problem

[zimpenfish]

I did see a game recently which did that (you place a tile, the animal moves a tile, etc.) - possibly on itch.io. I'll see if I can dig it out.

[OscarCunningham]

There's an old Flash game called 'Chat Noir' where you have to trap a cat on a hexagonal grid. Here's a copy of it: https://www.hoodamath.com/games/chatnoir.html

[zimpenfish]

Ah, yes, the one I played recently was basically that (except it was a horse, I think.)

[matsemann]

I remember a game I played on my phone ~15 years ago called "Greedy Spiders". The spiders would move greedily towards something every move, but you could cut strings in their web so they would have to start a new route. So you would kinda have to lure them into going one direction while slowly chipping away at the web, until you could completely cut them off or force them to have to take a longer detour giving you more time to cut more of the web. Quite challenging after a while.

[netsharc]

A Windows 3.1 game called Rodent's Revenge: https://classicreload.com/win3x-rodents-revenge.html

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r6CnPzTXKE

Damn, the good old days when games didn't have loot boxes, ads, etc...