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My list of must play puzzle games is far too short: Portal, Portal 2, Demon’s Souls, and Baba is You. It’s amazing to me that I’ve never heard of a game this la
by Waterluvian 6mo ago
My list of must play puzzle games is far too short: Portal, Portal 2, Demon’s Souls, and Baba is You. It’s amazing to me that I’ve never heard of a game this lauded.
- GolDDranks 6mo agoLittle known, but a warm recommendation, both for the puzzles and atmosphere: The Swapper. (disclaimer: I did some coding work for this game)
- huhtenberg 6mo agoGive "Please Don't Touch Anything" a try.
- kibibu 6mo agoNo "The Witness"? Not incredibly challenging, but I very much enjoyed its blend of puzzling and aesthetic.
- VorpalWay 6mo agoPersonally, I had wanted a new Myst, and The Witness wasn't that, and so I was a bit disappointed. Obduction was released a year or two later and it was similar to the Myst I remember from my childhood and it was also a good game. I strongly recommend it. That said, The Witness isn't a bad game as such, though the puzzles do get a bit repetitive in my opinion. I prefer more variety rather than hyper focus on one type of puzzles.
- Waterluvian 6mo agoFor me, Outer Wilds finally got the Myst feel right.
- VorpalWay 6mo agoInteresting, I had passed it by when I heard it had a time limit and reset mechanic (not unlike Zelda Majora's Mask). I hated that mechanic in Majora's Mask (and I never finished that game), it made the game feel stressful to me. I prefer games where I can play slow and deliberate. If there is a time mechanic it should be turn based, not real time. (Or it should be a very short time based system such as "run across the room to hit the other button, the cost of failing is 10 seconds of trying again, not 10 minutes".)
- Waterluvian 6mo agoI know exactly what you mean by Majora’s Mask. Ugh. I spent all that time getting here and now I’m out of time and it resets?! I can see why Outer Wilds might feel the same way. But somehow it didn’t for me. Probably because it really doesn’t take much at all to get right back to where you were.
- Balinares 6mo agoI would normally agree with you about time pressure, but Outer Wilds worked for me even so. In Outer Wilds I found the time loop liberating. By construction, nothing in the game is far away. You're only limited by how much you've figured out. And having the spark of understanding occur can take place at any time, including while you're away from the keyboard. So it's mostly about following your curiosity wherever it leads you, and from there you keep digging all the way, safe in the knowledge that in 22 minutes at most any screwups will be rolled back. And then you can try again, or, better follow your curiosity somewhere else. There's no lack of things to figure out, and some of them are completely optional. But... Figure them out anyway, the reward is worthwhile. "Thank you for remembering me."
- rcxdude 6mo agoOuter wilds definitely has stressful parts (it is also a horror game even though it doesn't wear the normal aesthetics of one), but generally the time pressure is not a major issue: the game even pauses while you're reading text so you can mull over things at your own pace.
- OkayPhysicist 6mo agoTry the RHEM series. It's Myst, but harder, complete with slideshow of late 90's 3D graphics environment. I liked Obduction, but I found it a bit too easy.
- throwaway219450 6mo agoThe remakes of Myst and Riven are beautiful. I don’t play many AAA games nowadays and my expectation of photorealism is about 10 years old. I was surprised at how well it runs on an M1.
- cableshaft 6mo agoHave you tried Blue Prince? It's got some similarities (it's basically Myst + a spatial puzzle + modern drafting/resource management board game). And you don't have the time element of Outer Wilds (Outer Wilds is brilliant though, and it kinda needs that time element to work properly). I mean technically it does in that you only have so many steps in a day, but you only spend a step moving from one room to another, so you can take your time in any given room, and you have ways to increase those steps. Also you're more likely to block yourself off with your room layout for the day than you are to run out of steps, at least once you start getting better at the game (it can happen though).
- devcpp 6mo agoMight as well add The Talos Principle then
- eps 6mo agoI find TW to be excruciatingly boring.
- acbart 6mo agoThe witness was fine, but The Looker was much better.
- jcl 6mo agoI think The Looker might appeal both to those who loved The Witness and those who didn’t. Several laugh-out-loud moments, some fun puzzles of its own - a wonderfully silly send-up, and free, too. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1985690/The_Looker/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1985690/The_Looker/
- deng 6mo ago"The Witness" was fine but I found its overly pompous philosophizing unbearable and pretentious. Rather play "Taiji" instead, which is clearly inspired by TW, but without the grandstanding, and at least IMHO, the puzzles are also better.
- coldpie 6mo agoThe Witness is one of my favorite games of all time, but yeah the first thing I say to anyone thinking of playing it is to skip all the audio logs. Those things are straight up embarrassing trash and I can understand anyone unfortunate enough to click on them dropping the game down into "don't recommend" territory. Also, given his extremely stinky personality, I probably won't be buying any future games by Blow. Haven't played Taiji, I'll give it a shot.
- kibwen 6mo agoPrepare yourself to get inundated with recommendations. Antichamber, Tunic, Talos Principle, Blue Prince, Return of the Obra Dinn, Outer Wilds, Superliminal, literally every Zachtronics game (most especially Opus Magnum)...
- fapjacks 6mo agoHuge second to zachtronics.
- cubefox 6mo agoDemon’s Souls??? I guess Zelda, Metroid and Half-Life also count as puzzle games then. :)
- bee_rider 6mo agoWell Zelda games consistently feature block-pushing puzzles so I guess Baba Is Zelda.
- pocksuppet 6mo agoaccidentally makes PEACH IS FORT Sorry Mario, but your princess is another castle!
- Wowfunhappy 6mo agoMetroid, Half-Life, and Demon's Souls I would take issue with, but I've always considered Zelda a puzzle game, and I never questioned it until now. I suppose the new Breath of the Wild / Tears of the Kingdom titles are more action-oriented, but everything in the mold of Ocarina of Time is a puzzle game with some light combat sprinkled on top.
- cubefox 6mo agoDungeons contain mainly puzzles, but otherwise it's a lot of combat and story and side quests, similar to most RPGs.
- Wowfunhappy 6mo agoBut the overworld missions are basically all puzzles! I don't think there's more combat in the overworld than in dungeons.
- Waterluvian 6mo agoI was being a bit silly but the Souls series do have a metroidvania angle to them. Also each enemy, especially the bosses, are small puzzles where you figure out how they work and then how to overcome them.
- hbn 6mo agoI don't think I've ever heard of Demon's Souls being categorized as a puzzle game. I suppose some of the bosses have a trick to figure out? But I'd still think it falls into the action RPG genre by a wide margin.
- Mond_ 6mo agoNot OP, but I've had the same conclusion. It's a bit cheeky to call it a puzzle game, but I don't think it's strictly wrong. Imo it's better to approach Demon's Souls as an exploration puzzle game with RPG stuff and combat, not as an action RPG (such as Dark Souls 3).
- kibwen 6mo agoPerhaps modern AAA games have become so handholdy that any game that shuts up long enough to allow the player to experience a sense of genuine exploration and wonder counts as a puzzle game, in which case I'd recommend the rich genre of indie Kings Field-likes, e.g. Lunacid. A bit further out would be something like Moonring (Ultima-like) or Caves of Qud.
- tmtvl 6mo agoShadow of the Colossus.
- igorbark 6mo agoif we're going to plug random puzzle games on this thread, IMO the most underdiscussed puzzle game of all time is Recursed, the only game i've played which properly explores recursion as a mechanic, and (MINOR SPOILER) the only game i've played which detects when you have created logical contradictions, and for each contradiction you achieve rewards you with a secret bonus level.
- blt 6mo agoRouting games like Mini Metro/Motorways, Freeways, and Fly Corp are not quite puzzle games in the traditional sense, but I'd definitely encourage any puzzle fans to try them.
- dmonitor 6mo agoFor another niche hit check out Recursed
- iamwil 6mo agoIt's a puzzle maker's puzzle game. The reason why it's so lauded is because the design is so tight. Kinda like how there's certain buildings the public thinks is ugly, but architects all like it because it tickles that part of the architect brain. It's a game that gives you that ah-ha moment. Kinda that moment where you walk from the forest into a clearing, but for your brain. The game is hard. I only kinda got the hang of it, and I didn't quite get to that ah-ha moment. You have to be willing to sit with it and think. I think with sokoban games, you can often just almost random walk your way to a solution, because the state space and its transitions is easy enough to wander into. But I didn't find that to be the case with SSR. You have to be able to reason about the state space changes, I think because the state space isn't exactly euclidean, so it's harder to wander into the solution.
- AntiDyatlov 6mo agoI can recommend Void Stranger. Real mystery box of a game. The first ending seriously hooked me into figuring out all its secrets.