At their core, all games are puzzles. FromTetristo the Uncharted series, the medium has constantly challenged players to find solutions to problems, whether that problem is fitting the right blocks into a hole or navigating ancient booby traps. In this guide, we’re going to break down the best puzzle games of all time.
Still, even if a game has puzzles, we won’t necessarily call it a puzzle game. No matter how many Riddler puzzles you solve as the world’s greatest detective,Batman: Arkham Knightis still an action game first and foremost. So for this guide, we’re focusing on pure puzzle games, meaning that solving puzzles is the core mechanic of the game. There’s no combat or other systems, unless they relate specifically to solving puzzles.
Puyo Puyo Tetris
The Witness
Baba is You
The Talos Principle
Bridge Constructor Portal
The Swapper
The Incredible Machine
Zero Escape Trilogy
Opus Magnum
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
Human: Fall Flat
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
Return of the Obra Dinn
Many puzzle game challenges tend to be somewhat unfair, with leaps in logic that are designed to be nearly unsolvable.SpaceChemoffers truly challenging puzzles that require you to perfect your skills in programming and circuitry, but solutions never feel hidden or unfair — they just require trial and error, like any scientific enterprise. There’s no prerequisite required to playSpaceChem— you don’t need a college degree to enjoy the game. It’s mentally stimulating, for sure, but it’s way more fun than the stressful screenshot above may suggest. In the game, players are asked to build circuits that can generate specific molecular structures indefinitely. From there, you’re able to begin to combine several circuits to create a complex factory web. The ultimate goal is to make this complicated factory before your circuits fall apart. If you’re successful, your creation will appear on the leaderboard ranking, which may give you a bit of inspiration to try and create something even more stellar next time.
Braidstarts as a seemingly standard platformer. But as you move through the game, it progressively becomes more challenging to continue; Every new world you enter can add new time flow-related machines into the mix. Every section becomes a puzzle that you have to solve to move on. In one world, time moves forward or backward depending on whether you walk right or left, and another world lets you rewind and have a shadow of yourself re-perform your previous actions while you do something else. Gamers highly regardBraidas one of the best puzzle games available today. It’s no shock then that the game’s creator, Jonathan Blow, also developed one of our other favorite games:The Witness. If you’re able to make it to the end ofBraid, you’ll get to witness an intriguing and dark ending that could leave you with several interpretations.
