Directors have historically shaped and subverted audience expectations. For over a century, cinematic techniques have developed and compounded, resulting in films that draw viewers into a process of anticipation, deduction, and interpretation. While critics have noted these techniques, this book offers the first study that treats them as what they really are: games. Spanning films created in the 1890s to today, the study traces the development of these strategies from the genesis of cinema through modern day movies. This book presents a range of director strategies as challenges that prompt viewers to think more closely about what they see. These include filmmakers embedding allusions that provide clues about plot or character, showing mise-en-scenes full of subtle hints, disrupting the plot's chronology, creating breaks in the narrative, and using symbols to encourage audience interpretation. They also reference other films, hide "Easter eggs" and sometimes signal that they might not be reliable in what they present to viewers. By treating such strategies as deliberate forms of viewer engagement, this study breaks down the ways directors establish active and dynamic relationships with their audiences, emphasizing how this common goal underscores modern technique in world cinema.