Contemporary animal welfare science emphasises the roles of challenge, skill development and skill expression in positive animal welfare, and takes a dynamic, temporal view of affect. However, cognitive enrichment as a welfare intervention (CE originally defined by Clark 2011 and later termed CEwelfare by Clark 2022) has largely focused on how challenge impacts welfare at a general activity budget level, rather than evidence of skill development and coping during challenge. This paper aims to realign CE with the current views of challenge and animal welfare, by proposing an updated CE definition and a new methodological approach. CE arises when an animal is challenged to develop and express its evolved cognitive skills, and the process or outcome of coping with challenge is associated with a net positive affective state. We argue that rule-scaffolded play (gameplay) could be a powerful subtype of CE, because games offer skill development opportunities similar to the Zone of Proximal Development in humans. Gameplay unfolds as a sequence of events, allowing us to explore how cognitive performance is temporally linked to emotional expression. We describe two broad types of CE game – Innovation and Flow – that feature relatively lower and higher rule scaffolding, respectively. We also discuss the role of frustration in CE; initial frustration is normal when animals encounter a challenge, but a Flow game aims to avoid ongoing boredom and frustration by maintaining a skill-challenge balance. We end by presenting a case study of a Flow game for marine mammals in a zoological setting.