head to head
Neither is meaningfully harder - they pose close to the same test. The widest gap is variance, and it is a single point.

Optimization · Practiced Mastery
Building bean chains fast under random pieces and garbage pressure.

Optimization · Practiced Mastery
A double-agent stealth game where managing two factions' trust meters becomes the core puzzle.
Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine leans Optimization (Practiced Mastery); Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent leans Optimization (Practiced Mastery).
Same score on execution - which means the number cannot separate them. The difference is in what each one asks of you.
Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine
Placement speed under garbage pressure decides late stages
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent
Stealth movement and timed objectives need steady hands.
Same score on reads - which means the number cannot separate them. The difference is in what each one asks of you.
Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine
Versus humans, anticipating chain timing adds an edge
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent
Trust meter pressure is scripted, not adaptive.
Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine leans a little harder on variance, though the gap is small.
Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine
Random bean colours shape every match
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent
Branching trust outcomes are unknown on first play.
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent leans a little harder on optimization, though the gap is small.
Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine
Chain-building structure knowledge is the core skill
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent
Balancing JBA and NSA trust is a solvable system.
A matching score does not mean a matching test. Two games can both sit at 10 on execution and demand completely different things of you - which is why the reasoning above matters more than the number beside it.
full breakdown
Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine →
full breakdown
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent →