I recommend that you read Brain Rot by Theodore Grey and Jerry Glynn. Among other things, it discusses this very topic. The summary I took away from it is you should make the game open-ended, giving full freedom to the player to go down the wrong paths, rather than being led down the right path.
Interesting snippets:
Software should not be unnecessarily hard to use, but neither should it shy away from or disguise the inherent richness of the subject matter. It should be open-ended, deep, and capable of doing senseless things if asked.
In a continuation of the above point, in a discussion of programs to teach geometry:
If students decide to build a completely useless geometrical construction, the program won't stop them. It lets them discover for themselves that their construction is uninteresting. This is very important: By allowing freedom to go off in the wrong direction, the software is giving students the opportunity to learn.
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants. -- Isaac Newton