In theoretical computer science, there is a (serious, peer reviewed, high quality) international conference series named "fun with algorithms". A lot of puzzles and board games and computer games have been studied mathematically or/and algorithmically in the volumes of this series. Be it Lemmings, Tantrix, Nurikabe, picture hanging puzzles, or hyperbolic (!) minesweeper.

See here for tables of contents: https://dblp.org/db/conf/fun/index.html

BTW, a while back the conference series went open access.