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 I love puzzle games! I was surprised to see that the forums didn't have a dedicated puzzle thread, so... now we do! What's a puzzle game? Many modern games include puzzle elements, but for the purposes of this thread, it's any game where solving puzzles is the main focus of the gameplay. I have not included management games (which tend to require a more open, sandbox-y, plate-spinning approach, rather than trying to reach a pre-determined solution), nor tactics games (even if I think Into The Breach is, honestly, more of a puzzle game than a tactical combat sim). I'd prefer the thread not devolve into arguments over what is/isn't a puzzle game. I am absolutely sure some goons will disagree with where I set the bar, and that's fine. If you have a game that you feel counts as a puzzle game, discuss it here, but let's not spend a ton of words trying to justify whether it belongs or not. Unless otherwise noted, all of these games are available on PC. Many are also available on various consoles. * Denotes goon picks (for now my favorites, but feel free to recommend any that you love, and I'll mark popular choices)  These games integrate the puzzles directly into the environment, and often have a strong setting or even a complete story to experience. Portal / Portal 2* - The granddaddy of "getting from one place to another" games. Fun background lore and lots of humor. Portal 2 has a wonderful co-operative mode that is essentially a separate game -- all new puzzles to solve with a friend! The Talos Principle 1 / 2* - For my money, the best puzzle game of all time. Walk around a ruined world to focus laser beams, open doors, and pick up keys. The beautiful and tragic backstory reveals itself as you proceed through the game, and new mechanics are introduced at exactly the right pace. If you liked Portal, you should love this. The Witness* - Solve a variety of 2D line puzzles on a beautifully rendered 3D island. Learning each new mechanic is the central theme of the game, leading to many wonderful "aha!" moments. There is a reason I didn't group this in with abstract puzzle games. I can't say why without massive spoilers. Just trust me. Chants of Sennaar* - A language-based game where all of the puzzles revolve around translating heiroglyphic languages not only to English, but between the other languages. Cool narrative, great art design. One of my favorites of 2023. Return of the Obra Dinn* - Use logic and deductive reasoning to discover what happened to the crew of an abandoned ship. It's a less traditional experience than most puzzle games, but the thought processes required to solve the mystery will appeal to puzzle fans, so I think it belongs here. As you unravel the mystery, each piece you figure out is supremely satisfying. Chuchel - Get that cherry! A hilarious romp with a fuzzy monster through dozens of charming puzzles. Lightmatter - Dodge shadows and create light to proceed through this straightforward puzzle game. Traversal-based gameplay is similar to Portal or The Talos Principle, but it never reaches the heights of those games. Filament - Discover the fate of the crew of this (nearly) derelict spaceship by solving puzzles. Great story, but the puzzles -- especially in the late game -- can be ridiculously difficult. It's worth it to see the ending, even if you have to look up a few solutions. Antichamber - Proceed through this world of non-linear geometry by figuring out its quirks and patterns. May be somewhat nausea-inducing. The Room (series) - Open complex and beautiful puzzle boxes. There are several games in this series, and they're all excellent. I actually prefer the tablet versions of these games, as the touchscreen can be a bit more satisfying than using the mouse. Gorogoa - Proceed through a colorful world of artwork by figuring out how to move between the various environments. One of the prettier puzzle games I've ever played. The Gardens Between - A novel mechanic where shifting your view will advance or rewind time, opening up new paths for the protagonists. Myst (series) - Honestly? I've never played any of these, despite being of an age where I was heavily into PC gaming when they were first released. My understanding is that you move around an island solving a variety of puzzles. Superliminal - Another non-linear environment game along the lines of Antichamber. I haven't played this one yet, but I've seen good feedback on it. Lara Croft GO - While there's a bit of background story, the focus is moving Lara along a path in each fairly abstract level. Also on mobile devices! Bridge Constructor (Portal) - Build a bridge to cross using limited materials and dubious physics. This may skew closer to an abstract puzzler -- you're building bridges, but there's no real story or background. I haven't played the Portal version yet, but I assume it's more of the same. Fun little distraction. Sensorium - A short puzzle homage to other popular games like Fez, The Witness, Braid, Antichamber, etc. It was made by one guy and heavily influenced by the other modern puzzle games he has played, but with the aforementioned twist about being "sense" based. (Thanks Superrodan!)  Most puzzle games don't require a lot of quick movement or reflexes, but here are a few that require tight timing or precision actions. Braid - Super Mario Brothers, except you can also manipulate time. Each world has new time-shifting mechanics to discover. The Turing Test - Figure out how to proceed through rooms and sneak past turrets. Very reminiscent of Portal, but with slightly better reflexes required. Limbo / Inside - Two games by the same developer with fairly similar mechanics. Manipulate the environment to get safely to the next area, sometimes requiring some strict timing. Unravel 1/2 - Another "get from here to there" game that requires the occasional tight platforming, but is generally about figuring out the correct sequence of events to proceed.  Who needs a story? Rotate blocks, place tiles, assemble sausages. Baba Is You* - Goon-developed! Use the elements of the levels to modify the game's rules as you go. Devilishly clever, and becomes very difficult but very rewarding later on. Slipways* - Honestly, this is more of an empire-building management game, but planning and connecting the planetary inputs/outputs very much feels like a puzzler. Either way, it's very good, and puzzle fans should enjoy it. Hexcells / Hexceed - Do you like Minesweeper? Well, this is better Minesweeper. I'd recommend picking up Hexceed for free on Steam, then dropping a few bucks on a huge pack of new levels if you enjoy it. Stephen's Sausage Roll - Don't let the looks fool you; this abstract game features well-crafted puzzles that reward thinking several moves ahead. Tetris / Tetris Effect - It's Tetris. Play more Tetris. (Note: There are LOTS of Tetris-style games out there, and many are excellent. Lumines, Puyo Puyo, Meteos, Puzzle Fighters, and many more. Feel free to discuss them here, but I'm not going to try to catalog them all in the OP.)  Programming and sequence-based games are different enough that I think they merit their own sub-category. I'd love more of these, but all of the good ones I know were created by Zachtronics. These are Zachtronics spatial manipulation and sequence-planning games: - Spacechem - Opus Magnum* - MOLEK-SYNTEZ And these three are Zachtronics programming-style games: - TIS-100 - Shenzhen I/O* - EXAPUNKS They all have their own quirks. If I had to pick one from each category, I'd recommend Opus Magnum and Shenzhen I/O. Automachef - Automate a restaurant assembly line. The best Zachtronics-style game I've played that isn't by Zachtronics. I don't feel like this needs to be a comprehensive list of every puzzle game ever made, but if anyone has an amazing puzzle game they'd recommend with no reservations, please post it with a description and I'll add it to the OP. Thanks for stopping by! WhiteHowler fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Dec 31, 2023 |
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Jun 6, 2021 02:23
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Played some more Slipways a little bit ago and got a 5 star+ rating (5 stars with one being platinum). I think what I enjoy about the game is that, yes, it's more of a puzzle than anything else, but you can change the shape of the pieces. Most planets have multiple input/output combinations, and the tech tree gives you zillions of different ways to change the formula. Yes, techs are random, that's true. But there are so many techs that allow you to solve the same problem in different ways that you're almost always going to have access to at least one solution. As an example, the simple problem of "Planet A is too far from Planet B to link them together." Here are the tech solutions I've seen:
There's probably more that I either haven't seen or have forgotten about.
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Jun 6, 2021 02:53
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Love that the teleports in slipway actually force you to get the ends correct
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Jun 6, 2021 03:26
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You're gonna feel pretty smart if you can finish some of the later puzzles in Dissembler.
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Jun 6, 2021 03:29
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WhiteHowler posted:Hexcells / Hexceed - Do you like Minesweeper? Well, this is MUCH better Minesweeper. I'd recommend picking up Hexceed for free on Steam, then dropping a few bucks on a huge pack of new levels if you enjoy it. WhiteHowler posted:Superliminal - Another non-linear environment game along the lines of Antichamber. I haven't played this one yet, but I've seen good feedback on it. dirby fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Jun 6, 2021 |
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Jun 6, 2021 03:44
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Sensorium came out recently, and it's pretty good. It has antichamber/talos principle aesthetics and a pretty neat gimmick of arranging puzzles around the five primary senses. the puzzle design is quite clever, especially near the end when it starts mixing puzzle types together, but it's very easy compared to most puzzle games I've played.
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Jun 6, 2021 05:41
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The news that there are higher rankings than 5 stars in Slipways excites me. I have a whole lot to learn about how that game works.
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Jun 6, 2021 06:17
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im really thankful for the undo button because im a dummy who gets the imports and exports confused a lot on planets
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Jun 6, 2021 06:19
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Gotta add 80 days!
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Jun 6, 2021 06:29
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SettingSun posted:The news that there are higher rankings than 5 stars in Slipways excites me. I have a whole lot to learn about how that game works. Yeah, it surprised me too. For the record, the first platinum star is at 16,000 points, and the second is at 20,000. Here's a screenshot of my empire in that game:  I went heavy on tech early on and it paid off. The seed is up above the stars on the left if anyone else wants to give it a go.
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Jun 6, 2021 06:46
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I love programming puzzle games and know about a bunch of them. FYI It's "Opus Magnum", not Magnum Opus. I would add "Infinifactory" under spatial - that would complete the list of commercial ones from Zachtronics. (His free ones are good too!) As far as ones from other people, I really liked Silicon Zeroes (programming style, by goon PleasingFungus). It is about placing and connecting simple hardware blocks to build more complex hardware blocks, more than writing code ala Shenzen IO, but it still feels closer to programming style. You basically end up building various CPUs over the course of the game out of simple blocks. OCTOPTICOM is another good one under spatial manipulation. It involves manipulating beams of colored light to produce various output images. I think the steam preview image is pretty illustrative: 
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Jun 6, 2021 07:15
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Since we're talking Slipway, here's my first successful run Started with Challenging right off the bat cause that's how I rolll and well, the game is pretty dang hard! Got several dead-end starts and even one or two promising empires that failed due to overextension and running out of money. This empire was on the edge a couple of times but the structure that supplies any resource to a single planet came up clutch in patching up crucial holes in my supply chains. Biggest issue I had is remembering the upgraded supply/production values. For example, remembering that levelling up mineral factories add a water requirement, or knowing which production chains require goods later on, stuff like that. Game is mad fun though, and while it can be heavily RNG-dependent the fact that games go by pretty quickly means it's no big deal losing. You'll bang your head against the wall but you'll generally know pretty quickly if you've got a hopeless start, and if you mess things up later on then it's probably your fault 
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Jun 6, 2021 07:19
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I love Braid and the Witness for their influences on game design and aesthetic, but I can't recommend them anymore given the drivel that's subsequently poured from Blow's mouth. Instead I can strongly recommend Stephen's Sausage Roll and English Country Tune, both by Stephen Lavelle. The former's just brutal, the latter's a great mind-bender.
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Jun 6, 2021 08:05
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Is this where I post about Puzzle Pirates? A game where you can take the fugue state of basic puzzling affected some abstract pirate layer of sea pillaging and throwing out the bilge water. You can become a puzzle peice in someone else's larger strategic layer of puzzle. Fuckin wild how it predates Sea of Theives and the whole Tetris99 stuffs.
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Jun 6, 2021 08:46
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WhiteHowler posted:Lara Croft Go - Mobile-only. While there's a bit of background story, the focus is moving Lara along a path in each fairly abstract level. Lara Croft GO and Hitman GO are actually available on PC. They're short but neat.
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Jun 6, 2021 10:10
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Discendo Vox posted:I love Braid and the Witness for their influences on game design and aesthetic, but I can't recommend them anymore given the drivel that's subsequently poured from Blow's mouth. What happened, did he go full alt right? I'll have to check out Slipway, it seems neat.
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Jun 6, 2021 11:45
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Full Bore is an impressively clever puzzle-platformer (very little reflexes required, far more puzzle than platform); moderately narrative. Maybe closer to the Boulderdash/Repton genre than regular platform. Does a lot of clever things with few mechanics and very simple controls. Beret is a free puzzle-platformer; it does involve reflexes but it has a quite forgiving time-save-and-reload interface that makes it so even difficult jumping is easy, and the real challenge is the puzzles. Use your character's telekinetic powers to move blocks in a way that lets you get from place to place. LogiGun. I just spent like 20 minutes trying to find the name of this fucker because I really wanted to recommend it but the name is completely unmemorable and searches for things that I could remember about the game just kept turning up Trine which is hardly a puzzle game at all gently caress you Google. I ended up scrolling through my "finished games" list on Steam as the only way I could find it, there are 519 games there so it was not a good method, but it worked. Anyway, this is a great puzzler if you don't have the attention span to want to keep iterating on a small number of mechanics, it introduces new mechanisms a lot, while still exploring them a reasonable amount. Every new mechanism has a short 'intro' period where you're forced down a narrow path that makes you learn how the new thing works, before it gets integrated into the puzzle-solving.
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Jun 6, 2021 13:00
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:OCTOPTICOM is another good one under spatial manipulation. It involves manipulating beams of colored light to produce various output images. I think the steam preview image is pretty illustrative: Thanks for sharing this! The look of OCTOPTICOM reminds me a bit of the old Chromatron, which it seems was far from the first game with colored lasers, according to the article Reflections on a Design. dirby fucked around with this message at 11:26 on Jun 7, 2021 |
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Jun 6, 2021 13:06
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The Swapper - "The Swapper takes place in an isolated and atmospheric sci-fi world. Players wield an experimental device which allows them to create clones of themselves, swapping their entire consciousness into new bodies to overcome the challenges of the environment." Looks cool as the art is made out of clay. The atmosphere is pretty  Gateways - 2d platformer. You have a Portal style gun, but what if it could also let you change size, walk on walls and timetravel?
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Jun 6, 2021 13:49
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The Swapper was pretty good, but I got more enjoyment from Stealth Inc 2.
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Jun 6, 2021 14:03
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dirby posted:I really liked Hexcells and its sequels, but there were often chains of boring/easy steps you have to click through. I found that to be the case even more so with Hexceed (though I'm not too far into it). A game in the same sort of style that doesn't have that problem and has tons of pretty and expertly hand-crafted levels is Tametsi. Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:[FYI It's "Opus Magnum", not Magnum Opus. quote:I would add "Infinifactory" under spatial - that would complete the list of commercial ones from Zachtronics. (His free ones are good too!) quote:As far as ones from other people, I really liked Silicon Zeroes (programming style, by goon PleasingFungus). It is about placing and connecting simple hardware blocks to build more complex hardware blocks, more than writing code ala Shenzen IO, but it still feels closer to programming style. Discendo Vox posted:I love Braid and the Witness for their influences on game design and aesthetic, but I can't recommend them anymore given the drivel that's subsequently poured from Blow's mouth. quote:Instead I can strongly recommend Stephen's Sausage Roll and English Country Tune, both by Stephen Lavelle. The former's just brutal, the latter's a great mind-bender. KirbyKhan posted:Is this where I post about Puzzle Pirates? A game where you can take the fugue state of basic puzzling affected some abstract pirate layer of sea pillaging and throwing out the bilge water. You can become a puzzle peice in someone else's larger strategic layer of puzzle. sinky posted:The Swapper - "The Swapper takes place in an isolated and atmospheric sci-fi world. Players wield an experimental device which allows them to create clones of themselves, swapping their entire consciousness into new bodies to overcome the challenges of the environment." itry posted:Lara Croft GO and Hitman GO are actually available on PC. They're short but neat. Updated the OP. I didn't like Hitman GO nearly as much as Lara Croft GO, but they're both worth checking out.
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Jun 6, 2021 16:26
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I feel ignored.  (The efforty Full Bore + Logigun post; I don't care about Stealth Inc.) roomforthetuna fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Jun 6, 2021 |
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Jun 6, 2021 16:31
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roomforthetuna posted:I feel ignored. Sorry, I read those too! I'll check them out and put them on the list of things to consider adding to the OP.
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Jun 6, 2021 16:50
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The weekly challenge for Slipways is really fun (week #1 ground floor baby), the modifiers are extra people and fewer robots which means you can really pump up Culture bonuses. I ended up scoring just north of 16k and got my first Platinum, feeling pretty good about that edit: 
Ben Nerevarine fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Jun 6, 2021 |
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Jun 6, 2021 17:47
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Omobono posted:What happened, did he go full alt right? Specifically  about women and game development. It was bizarre after much of the team on the witness were women.
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Jun 6, 2021 18:22
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Itch have a huge bundle for Palestinian aid going right now similar to the racial justice bundle they did last year. I'm still going through the list but among other things it includes three excellent puzzle games by Draknek: A Good Snowman is Hard To Build - Push snowballs to build snowmen. Charming, somewhat difficult. Sokobond - Move atoms around to form molecules. Possibly educational, difficult. Cosmic Express - Plan a rail route to get all the monsters to their destinations. Peaceful, very difficult. Not in the bundle, Draknek also made the more recent and amazing A Monster's Expedition, probably my second favorite 2D puzzle game after Baba. I'll also put in another voice in support of Full Bore, a very widely overlooked exploration/puzzle game. If you enjoyed Toki Tori 2+ check it out.
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Jun 6, 2021 19:59
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roomforthetuna posted:Full Bore is an impressively clever puzzle-platformer (very little reflexes required, far more puzzle than platform); moderately narrative. Maybe closer to the Boulderdash/Repton genre than regular platform. Does a lot of clever things with few mechanics and very simple controls. Full Bore is one of my all time favorites. the puzzle mechanics are really satisfying to work with
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Jun 6, 2021 22:58
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I just finished Pavilion and I'd definitely recommend it. It's short, so maybe wait for a sale, but definitely give it a try if it looks interesting.
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Jun 7, 2021 03:12
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WhiteHowler posted:The Talos Principle* - For my money, the best puzzle game of all time. Walk around a ruined world to focus laser beams, open doors, and pick up keys. The beautiful and tragic backstory reveals itself as you proceed through the game, and new mechanics are introduced at exactly the right pace. If you liked Portal, you should love this. Agreeing with this sentiment. Everything about the game is wonderful. Plus, since it's made by Croteam, it has a lot of easter eggs and secrets.
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Jun 7, 2021 03:55
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dirby posted:Thanks for sharing this! For those looking for it, the game is "OCTOPTICOM" with a "t" after the "p". I'm a bit reminded of the old Chromatron, which it seems was far from the first game with colored lasers, according to the article Reflections on a Design. I bought Tametsi and.....yeah that sure is hard-mode hexcells/minesweeper.
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Jun 7, 2021 03:59
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WhiteHowler posted:The Talos Principle* - For my money, the best puzzle game of all time. Walk around a ruined world to focus laser beams, open doors, and pick up keys. The beautiful and tragic backstory reveals itself as you proceed through the game, and new mechanics are introduced at exactly the right pace. If you liked Portal, you should love this. I gotta admit I haaaate Talos Principle. This is about 50/50 the roteness of its design and the triteness of its writing. The ground it treads could be a trench network from WW1.
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Jun 7, 2021 07:25
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I thought this was one of my better Slipways games. 5 prosperous planets! But it really was the pitiful legacy score that did me in. Ah well, more practice.
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Jun 7, 2021 07:54
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Yeah, doing just one more task would have gotten you to 5 stars. Each task generates 500+ endgame points (they're usually 10-12 legacy points, and each legacy point is 50 endgame points) before counting the happiness multiplier. Sometimes the tasks just don't want to cooperate, though.
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Jun 7, 2021 08:43
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I had a pretty good one for my first five star run. I think i'm getting the hang of it. Tech early, tech often, folks. The nice thing about teching is that building things on a planet itself does not actually take any time which is very helpful.
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Jun 7, 2021 13:12
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Panzeh posted:The nice thing about teching is that building things on a planet itself does not actually take any time which is very helpful. This is an important point of optimization, as well as trading unallocated resources (culture, energy, ambiguous exports, etc) I’ve discovered that my rampant scouting is fine on normal difficulty but completely cripples my early game on Tough. I can basically ignore money on normal—not at all the case on higher difficulties
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Jun 7, 2021 13:47
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QUBE/QUBE 2 are the best of the Portal-a-likes I've played. QUBE 1: Directors Cut gets rid of a couple of the more bullshit fiddly physics-y puzzles, but adds a crap voiceover that ruins the atmosphere. Qube 2 also has more plot, but it's integrated better and I've replayed it (and its DLCs) multiple times. Prime Mover is a pixel-art programming game I had fun with, but may be way too low level for most.
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Jun 7, 2021 14:16
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KirbyKhan posted:Is this where I post about Puzzle Pirates? A game where you can take the fugue state of basic puzzling affected some abstract pirate layer of sea pillaging and throwing out the bilge water. You can become a puzzle peice in someone else's larger strategic layer of puzzle. Do people still play that? Haha, I wonder if I still own one of the islands on the alpha ocean. I really liked The Bradwell Conspiracy; I won't pretend it's some superlative example or anything, but for twenty bucks and a couple afternoons worth of narrative basically nonviolent environmental puzzle solving I enjoyed the heck out of it and happily recommend for anyone who's already blitzed through everything else listed here.
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Jun 7, 2021 14:18
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Trying to think of retro puzzlers ones I played in anger back when Chip's Challenge and its sequels, obv. I always thought it had too many trial-and-error levels though. Bombuzal/Ka-Blooey has gotten a bit of a bad rap in various retro-let's-plays I've seen, but it's perfectly serviceable if you play in the 2D view (rather than the gimmicky 3D one). Did the SNES version let you do that? Turns out Pushover got a Steam re-release. The... the DOS version's music didn't sound like that originally, right?
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Jun 7, 2021 15:23
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I'm loving Slipways a lot, but I'm not very good at picking out when and where to lab up yet. I probably scout too much too, especially in the beginning, but ending up with an unsatisfied planet at the turn of the year Feels Bad, Man
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Jun 7, 2021 15:38
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If you like Slipways, another good recommendation is Dorfromantik. The play is very simple. You start with a single blank hex. Each turn, you get a new hex to add to your map, which must connect hexside-to-hexside with one or more hexes on your map. Hexes can have one of six terrains on each side - blank like your starting hex, or towns, forest, fields, rails, or river. There are also lake tiles (all water/river sides) and reservoir tiles (all rail/river sides). For every hexside the new tile matches to an adjacent tile, you get 10 points. Where it gets interesting is in keeping the game going. You start with 40 tiles. Some tiles will give you a condition when placed - towns want to have a number of houses in them, forests a certain number of trees, rivers and lakes a certain number of river/water tiles, and rails a certain length of rails; and those conditions will either be "at least" or "exactly". If you meet the condition either when played or at any further point in the game, you get a bonus set of tiles added to your supply. Likewise, if a tile has all six of its sides exactly match surrounding tiles, you get a bonus tile (in addition to the full 60 points). So you don't have to place tiles perfectly, and sometimes it help to just have a "this area is the Land of Trash", but the more you can place, the longer your run goes and the more points you get.
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Jun 7, 2021 17:08
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