In a world filled with action-packed RPGs and heart-pounding horror games, puzzle games often get a pretty bad rap. They’re often dismissed as lame, “educational” games reserved for the elderly and little kids, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Puzzle games have slowly and quietly become some of the most creative, emotional, and downright addictive experiences in gaming, especially in recent years. In some cases, people don’t even realize they’re actually playing a puzzle game until they revisit its store page.
The genre has evolved far beyond the color-matching, block-sliding, jigsaw snooze-fests of our childhood. Now, they’re all about solving mysteries, cracking codes, deciphering foreign languages, and unraveling mind-bending stories that stick with you long after you put the controller down.
If you always thought puzzle games weren’t your thing, then you probably just haven’t played the right ones yet. These are the best games for puzzle fanatics and skeptics alike, guaranteed to convert you into a puzzle fan for life.
10 Spring Falls
Help Reclaim What Was Lost
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Developer |
SPARSE//GameDev |
|---|---|
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Release Date |
November 17th, 2019 |
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Platform |
PC, iOS |
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Genre |
Puzzle, Casual |
Spring Falls is as simple as it is relaxing, perfect for unwinding after a long day.
In Spring Falls, your goal is to guide water down rocky slopes and mountainsides, breathing life into the land below and helping local wildlife flourish. Each level begins with a barren, desolate cliffside, but with every path you clear, you’ll transform the landscape into a thriving sanctuary.
Each board will have a set number of wilting flowers that you’ll need to prioritize when creating your paths. To do this, you’ll need to raise and lower tiles to change the mountain’s shape, allowing the stream to touch each of the thirsty plants.
The challenge comes in figuring out the right order of moves, since even just one wrong adjustment could cut off the water’s path.
It makes you think, but it doesn’t punish you in ways that other puzzle games might; instead of making you rack up points or race against the clock, all you have to do is slow down, think carefully, and forge paths based on what you think is right.
9 Whisper of the House
Turning Houses Into Homes
Whisper of the House is kind of like Unpacking, but way better.
In this game, you’ll take on the role of a newcomer in a strange, cozy little town. Even as a newcomer, though, you’ll quickly become promoted to the town’s favorite housekeeper, as you take on various interior decorating jobs from the townspeople.
You’ll get to help people move into new homes, set up shops, organize cluttered workspaces, and so much more. Each task is a little bit different, as you’ll have to tailor each location to the customer’s personality and preferences.
With every new task completed and cozy puzzle solved, you’ll unravel more and more stories behind the mysterious town.
Every resident has their secrets, and it’s your job to uncover them; you’ll have to piece together the smallest clues hidden in everyday objects and environments, and slowly stitch the massive network connecting everyone back together.
8 Is This Seat Taken?
Assigned Seating Simulator
Is This Seat Taken? is one of those puzzle games that just always makes you laugh, no matter how hard you try not to.
In this game, you have to arrange seating for groups of hilariously mismatched people, whether it be on a bus, in a restaurant, or even at a wedding. No one can figure out where to sit without starting an argument, and it’s your job to fix that.
The characters in this game are outrageously picky, making seating arrangements much more of a challenge. One character might refuse to sit next to someone who chews too loudly, while another might insist on sitting by the window or close to the bathroom.
Every level gives you a new group of guests with a fresh set of demands, and it’s up to you to find the perfect arrangement that keeps everyone happy. It’s the kind of puzzle game that makes you smile as much as it makes you think, offering a casual and cozy experience that no one could turn down.
7 Agent A: A Puzzle in Disguise
Solving Puzzles, Saving the World
Agent A: A Puzzle in Disguise drops you into the polished shoes of a secret agent on a top-secret mission, a dream game for any true-crime fan.
Your mission is to track down Ruby La Rouge, infiltrate her secret hideaway, and put a stop to her evil plans before it’s too late. Ruby won’t go down without a fight, though, and her trail will be littered with puzzles, traps, and brainteasers designed to throw you off her scent.
The puzzles range from clever logic challenges to classic point-and-click problem-solving, challenging enough to keep you guessing but not so difficult that you’d want to give up.
With every collected clue and deciphered code, you’ll be one step closer to solving the mystery and saving the day. Just remember, there’s a reason why Ruby La Rouge has never been caught; you’ll need to stay on your toes and leave no rock unturned if you’re going to figure her out.
6 The Past Within
Puzzles Are Better Played Together
If you feel intimidated by the thought of taking on a puzzle game alone, then The Past Within is the perfect choice.
The Past Within is a cooperative experience that allows up to two people to play, giving each player an alternate perspective of the problem.
This game allows you and a friend to take on the roles of two characters, one rooted in the past and one in the future. Working together, you’ll need to piece together clues from each timeline and connect them to your partner’s, all in the name of solving a mysterious family legacy.
The puzzles themselves vary in difficulty, from cracking strange codes and deciphering symbols to manipulating objects that shift reality across time itself. If you ever get stuck in a problem, you can always choose to collaborate on it with your friend, so roadblocks are far and few between.
Like many co-op games, collaboration in The Past Within is essential; if you and your buddy aren’t on the same wavelength, then you can kiss that puzzle solution goodbye.
5 Strange Horticulture
Selling Plants and Solving Mysteries
I honestly didn’t expect Strange Horticulture to be as puzzle-heavy as it was when I first got into it, but that didn’t affect my opinion of it in the slightest. Strange Horticulture is one of the best games to get people into puzzles, especially if you love solving mysteries and unraveling ancient conspiracies at the same time.
Strange Horticulture puts you behind the counter of an odd little plant shop, growing and selling mysterious plants with magical properties.
Your customers are as odd as the flora on your shelves, and their requests are often even stranger. It’s your job to get to the root of their problem, identify the plant they’re after, and either find it on your shelves or go foraging for it in the wild. Strangely enough, identifying the plants is the hardest part of the process.
You’ll need to cross-reference their appearance, uses, characteristics, and growing conditions with various notes and diagrams you’ll collect on your journey. If you get one wrong, you could end up selling the wrong plant to a customer, leading to a reduction in your sanity (you take your job as a plant seller very seriously).
With every plant identified and order filled, you’ll get pulled a little deeper into the game’s intricate story, leading you down a rabbit hole of cults, witchcraft, and inhuman entities capable of destroying life as we know it.
4 Baba is You
Rewrite Your Own Rules
Baba is You is as simple as it is addictive, with puzzles built around creativity rather than complexity.
This game casts you as a tiny, unassuming creature in a world where everything you touch is part of a larger puzzle. Your main goal is to reach the flag at the end of each level, but how you get there changes constantly with the terrain.
Each level will open to a new landscape filled with obstacles, along with various words that can be interacted with. These words and their letters can be pushed, pulled, and rearranged in new order, giving them new meanings that change the rules of the level.
For example, on a level where there is “Baba is You” and “Flag is Win”, you can rearrange and combine the letters to say “Flag is You”, giving you control of the flag as if it were your character. From there, all you’d need to do is guide the flag to where your original character is standing and win.
If you think you know everything there is to know about puzzle games, then think again. Baba is You rewrites the rules of the game entirely; this game will make you forget everything you ever thought you knew about puzzles.
3 Strange Antiquities
Piece Together Ancient Mysteries
From the same team that brought us Strange Horticulture comes Strange Antiquities, a puzzle game about running an antique shop full of arcane artifacts.
Similar to Strange Horticulture, your goal in Strange Antiquities is to identify, catalog, and use the strange relics in your shop to help the poor people of Undermere with their equally strange problems.
Each antique comes with its own set of secrets, and solving the puzzle of what they do and how they’re used will be your key to progressing forward.
The townspeople’s requests range from strange yet harmless to eerie and unsettling, and how you approach these requests can greatly affect the rest of your playthrough. Will you give the customer exactly what they asked for, or will you trick them into taking something else for the greater good?
The customers may not know the difference, but your guilty conscience sure does, and eventually, you’ll have to deal with the consequences of your actions one way or another.
2 Chants of Sennaar
Language Puzzles Done Right
In Chants of Sennaar, you play as the Traveler, a mysterious figure tasked with a single mission: reunite the Peoples of the Tower, no matter the cost.
The Tower is made up of five distinct groups of people. Each group has its own language, made up of different letters and symbols.
The Peoples of the Tower have been divided for as long as anyone can remember; originally separated by fear and mistrust, they now can’t communicate with each other even if they wanted to, as their languages have each evolved past the point of any resemblance.
You’ll need to bridge this impossible gap by learning and deciphering each of the people’s different languages, in an effort to make communication between them possible again.
Every ancient book, scroll, inscription, and overheard conversation is another clue, and another step closer to stitching each dialect together until communication is within reach. You’ll build your own internal dictionary as you go, testing theories and refining meanings until the pieces finally click into place.
It’s an intensely rewarding experience that doesn’t just test your logic skills, but your observation and listening skills as well.
1 The Room
One Room, One Box, One Exit
The Room is easily one of the most popular puzzle games on the market, and it’s easy to understand why.
It’s the perfect game for anyone looking to exercise their brain without any distractions, giving you top-notch brainteasers without stressing you out with all the useless filler of other puzzle experiences.
This game begins with a mysterious invitation, inviting you to the dark and dingy attic of an abandoned house. In the attic lies a strange, cast-iron safe covered in mysterious carvings, and a note on top from a distant companion.
The note promises something ancient and astonishing waiting for you in the box, if only you can figure out how to get inside. What follows is an intense investigation of hidden mechanisms, cryptic symbols, and intricate clues tucked into every corner of the safe, where every puzzle solved is another one gained.
Every turn of a key, slide of a latch, and mechanical rotation brings you one step closer to the truth, a reward so tantalizing you won’t want to put your controller down for even a moment.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
