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14 Video Games That Will Improve Your Problem-Solving and Strategy Skills

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Planet coaster, red alert remastered, call of duty series, forza horizon 4, mass effect, final fantasy, starcraft series, grand theft auto v, civilization series, titanfall 2 series, bejeweled 3.

Video games train your problem-solving skills by getting you to find solutions to complicated problems. They allow players to try out different things to figure out which one works best. Keeping this in mind, here are a variety of our favorite video games that will improve your problem-solving skills.

Running your own themepark isn’t that straight forward. You will be presented with numerous problems from which you’ll need to solve. From unhappy guests to budget problems, your moves will result in you winning or losing the various scenarios on offer. This great game will also allow you to explore your creative palate as you design the themepark of you dreams.

If you’ve never played the Red Alert series from EA (originally Westwood), then you’re in for a treat. It’s a fine series that truly marked the RTS genre. However, the remaster brings fresh attention to the series and it will also enable you to master your problem solving and strategy making skills. You’ll need to bankroll your army by collecting ore, purchase units and buildings, and then decide if and when to attack your opponent(s). Exciting? Absolutely. You’ll be smarter too from playing this game.

Feeling as though you’d love to delve into real-estate? Perhaps you could test-out your skills with the old-school board game, Monopoly. This game is all about decisions and, well, luck. There are numerous editions of this video game, launched on various platforms. Interestingly, this game first appeared as a video game back in 1985.

Another board-game that can be best played on a tablet. Chess is a game of problem solving and strategy. You’ll need to make the right moves, learning the power of each piece. With the Queen the most important and powerful unit, you’ll want to protect and utilize

How does a first-person-shooter make this list? Well, unless you decide to aimlessly run around firing, it’s your strategy that will make the difference, and that, of course, involves problem solving, too. Call of Duty is an FPS video game franchise developed by Infinity Ward and published by Activision. The game originally focused on games set in the Second World War. Over time, the developers have set the games in this series in futuristic worlds, the Cold War, and outer space. As part of a trained squad, you will play through the chaos of war. In addition to authentic squad tactics and movements, each soldier’s unique personality and training will come out on the battlefield. Call of Duty helps players to improve their spatial intelligence and visual attention skills.

Set in an open-world based in a fictionalized Kingdom of Great Britain, this racing video game was developed by Playground Games. The publisher of Forza Horizon 4 is Microsoft Studios, and it features a route creator that allows you to create races using customized routes. The game also features a dynamic weather system depicting the change of seasons. In the game, the environment changes depending on the season; for instance, Derwentwater freezes in winter, allowing the player to drive on the ice and reach areas that are inaccessible during other seasons. This fast-paced video game can improve your ability to make correct decisions when you are under pressure.

Set in the year 2183 within the Milky Way galaxy, Mass Effect is an ARPG (action role-playing game) that was developed by BioWare and published by Electronic Arts. It’s the first installment in the Mass Effect game series. In the game, a highly advanced machine race called Reapers has threatened the existence of civilization. The player takes on the role of Commander Shepard and you have to stop a rogue agent who’s planning to carry out the Reapers’ galactic invasion. You need to complete multiple quests that involve squad and vehicular combat, space exploration, and interaction with NPCs (non-player characters). This game can help you learn how to evaluate your options quickly and correctly.

Final Fantasy, an anthology science fantasy media franchise, was created by a Japanese video game company called Hironobu Sakaguchi. It was developed and published by a Japanese video game holding company called Square Enix. The franchise centers on fantasy and science RPG games. Each game has different plots, settings, and characters. Character names are often derived from pop culture, languages, history, and mythologies of cultures from different parts of the world. Fantasy role-playing games can help to train players how to evaluate their options faster and accurately.

Set in a science-fiction universe, this military science fiction RTG requires strategic thinking. It tests and refines the player’s information-gathering skills. You’ll assume the role of three characters throughout the game. The game story is presented in several ways, including an instruction manual, conversations within the missions themselves, and briefings to each mission. StarCraft can improve your ability to solve real-life and imaginary problems.

Grand Theft Auto V was developed by a New York City-based company known as Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. It’s the fifth game in the Grand Theft Auto series. The game offers you the option to explore Los Santos and Blaine County world in 4K resolution and beyond. You’ll also get the chance of experiencing the game running at 60 FPS (frames per second). Because players assume the role of a criminal, this may help to train them how to quickly process and keep track of information in high-stress situations.

Civilization, a turn-based strategy 4X game, was developed and published by an American company known as MicroProse. Players are tasked with leading the human civilization throughout several millennia. They can do this by controlling different areas, including military, research, trade, government, urban development, and exploration. The player can also control individual units in the game and advance the conquest, exploration, and settlement of the world. The game teaches you how to work as a team to solve problems and become productive at work.

Titanfall 2 is a multiplayer first-person shooter game that was developed by Respawn Entertainment. The publisher of Titanfall 2 is an American video game company called Electronic Arts. The player controls mecha-style exoskeletons, their pilots, and Titans. The game is set in science-fiction war-torn outer space colonies and features fast-paced future warfare. Players have the tactical ability to regenerate speed boosts, invisibility cloaking, and x-ray vision. The game can help you learn how to formulate and execute strategic plans to solve problems.

This hack-and-slash ARPG was developed by Blizzard Entertainment. It’s the third installment in the Diablo series. The gameplay revolves around the player defeating increasingly difficult enemies to obtain stronger equipment. You’ll fight enemies using various character class skills that you can customize by talent trees and equipment. Enemies are divided into monster families defined by their location, combat style, and theme. Diablo IV can improve your cognitive abilities and allow you to find solutions to problems faster when you are in a difficult situation.

This tile-matching puzzle game was published and developed by PopCap Games. It’s the fifth installment in the Bejeweled series. In the game, the player has to swap one of the on-screen gems with an adjacent one and form chains of at least three gems of the same color. This game can teach you how to relax and reduce stress, which is important when you want to solve a problem.

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Playing these 6 video games could help improve your problem-solving skills

Jane McGonigal , a world-renowned designer of alternate-reality games who has a Ph.D. in performance studies, wants to change people's conception of video games as " just escapist, guilty pleasures."

" My number one goal in life is to see a game designer nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize," McGonigal writes on her website . 

She tells Business Insider she wants people to realize that games can be "powerful tools to improve our attention, our mood, our cognitive strengths, and our relationships."

And research is on her side. 

Studies suggest that mainstream games like "Call of Duty" may improve our cognitive abilities significantly more than games specifically designed to do so by designers like Luminosity.

To help spread the truth about common misconceptions, seven neuroscientists from around the world signed the document "A Consensus on the Brain Training Industry from the Scientific Community" in 2014 to say they "object to the claim" that brainteaser games can improve cognitive abilities, as no scientific evidence has been able to confirm such a claim. 

Even better for gamers, research from North Carolina State University and Florida State University suggests that mainstream games geared toward entertainment can help improve attention, spatial orientation, and problem-solving abilities.

In her book, " Super Better ," McGonigal writes that the researchers she talked to about this seeming contradiction offered a simple explanation: "Traditional video games are more complex and harder to master, and they require that the player learn a wider and more challenging range of skills and abilities."

If you want to have fun and stimulate your mind, McGonigal recommends playing one of these six games three times a week for about 20 minutes.

McGonigal says playing fast-paced games like "Call of Duty," a first-person shooter game, can help improve visual attention and spatial-intelligence skills, which can lead to better performance in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Another fast-paced game, "Forza," a car-racing game, may help improve your ability to make accurate decisions under pressure.

Taking on the role of a criminal in a big city in "Grand Theft Auto" may help train you to process information faster and keep track of more information — up to three times the amount as nongamers, some studies suggest — in high-stress situations.

Strategic games like "StarCraft," a military-science-fiction game, can also improve the ability to solve imaginary and real-life problems, possibly because they teach users to both formulate and execute strategic plans.

Games that require strategic thinking, like science-fiction third-person-shooter game "Mass Effect," also test and refine your information-gathering skills.

Lastly, "thinking games" like "Final Fantasy," a fantasy-role-playing game, can help train you to evaluate your options faster and more accurately.

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The best puzzle games on PC

Stump yourself with the best puzzle games from our list of favorites.

Choosing the best puzzle games from decades of favorites seems like an impossible task, but it's one we've undertaken. Of all the revered PC game genres, puzzle games are among the most classic, but for this list of recommendations, we've haven't tried to rank the greatest puzzlers in the history of everything—just great, modern games we think you'll enjoy a lot right now.

2023 games : Upcoming releases Best PC games : All-time favorites Free PC games : Freebie fest Best FPSes : Finest gunplay Best MMOs : Massive worlds Best RPGs : Grand adventures

We've also narrowed our definition of 'puzzle game.' We hope you’ll find a game on this list that you haven’t played before, that’ll test your problem solving skills and ingenuity, and give you that fuzzy wave of relief and pride every time you have a breakthrough. And with that as our goal, we haven’t included games like Peggle, which aren't really puzzling , or Tetris, which wouldn’t be quite so challenging if time weren't an issue. We’re looking for more contemplative games here—you know, chin scratchers, brow furrowers, hair puller-outers, games that are going to stump you. We'll add to this list in the future, too, dropping in new games, or older ones if we revisit them and decide the ought to have a place here.

Release date: 2014 | Developer: State of Play | Steam Kami’s rules are simple: click on any pattern of contiguous squares of the same color to change them to another color of your choosing, and try to make the whole sheet the same color in as few moves as possible. The basic technique is to start by unifying the largest shapes, surrounding any odd colored islands, and then swapping the large area to match those isolated squares. The principle is straightforward, but identifying the most efficient path requires seeing several moves ahead, and after the tutorial puzzles it can take a lot of thought. It feels great when it clicks, and the way Kami’s rough sheets of colored paper magically fold themselves away is mesmerizing. The colors schemes are gorgeous, too, and the music is sweet and relaxing—it feels to us like an excellent companion for a mid-afternoon cup of coffee.

The only problem we have with Kami is the baffling inclusion of a daily hint limit. On mobile, you could pay for extra hints, but on PC, there are no microtransactions. So, if you run out of hints for the day, that’s it. And the hints are important. If a puzzle has us stumped, getting just the first move is really welcome, as it sets us on the right path without removing the sense of accomplishment entirely.

Kami made this list despite some unnecessary mobile baggage, though, because there's a workaround: if you run out of hints and really want another one, you can just set your system clock to another day.

Release date: 2014 | Developer: Thomas Bowker | Steam Lyne is another game we share with mobile, but worth a shout. It’s not the sort of game that stumps you, stopping you cold—it’s one for fiddling with until the solution appears. The basic problem is that you have a few shapes on the board which need to be connected. Your connective lines can’t intersect each other, and you can only connect shapes of the same type. You must connect every shape with its same-shape friends, and fill every ‘hub,’ each of which might need a different number of connections. The solutions are zig-zagging patterns of lines, perfectly avoiding each other and hitting all the notes they’re supposed to. It can be challenging, but never really frustrating, and it's a great way to zone out.

Release date: 2011 | Developer: Zachtronics | Steam SpaceChem is about making molecules, though you don’t need a graduate degree in chemistry to sort out its puzzles. That’s what’s so lovely about Zachtronics Industries’ games— TIS-100 , for instance, is about assembly language programming, but we’ve managed to get through a few puzzles and feel awfully clever without any experience in that area, either.

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Essentially, you’re creating an elemental circuit board, a set of instructions for building molecules. As in Infinifactory, the act of designing a system and then watching it work is the joy here. Eventually, though, SpaceChem does get hard, so approach it with patience and a willingness to learn.

The Swapper

Release date: 2013 | Developer: Facepalm Games | Steam The primary mechanic in The Swapper is the ability to create a few clones of your main character wherever your line of sight and clone-gun reach permits, which then allows you to ‘swap’ to that clone instantly. Clones mirror everything you do, regardless of where they’re located. Shoot one up to a high platform, take a few steps forward, and that clone will fall forty feet and hit the ground with a sickening crunch. Puzzles revolve around environmental obstacles (switches, light variables that prevent cloning or swapping, twitch clone-swapping) but your cloning tools never fundamentally change. What you’re allowed to do is there from the get go, and if you catch on early enough, there are huge sequences of the game you can skip earlier than normal.

Environments and objects themselves are based on actual clay models, so everything carries an uncanny, semi-realistic aesthetic, as if you could reach out and touch any of The Swapper’s decrepit space station environments. As if the gameplay wasn’t enough, the narrative wraps everything up in a mysterious and somewhat horrifying examination of what qualifies as a living person. Puzzle over life and death while you puzzle over puzzles.

Release date: 2009 | Developer: Number None | Steam Every world in Braid opens with a slightly tweaked version of the same ‘tutorial’ level. There’s a pit and no way for your little Mario-esque avatar to jump across. Initially, it feels insulting, a silly commentary on 2D platforming conventions and level design—nothing you typically see in those games is ever impossible. Otherwise, how would you finish the game? But Braid turns one genre into something else entirely by layering abstract rules and mechanics.

Each world operates by its own set of rules based on the passage of time. In one, you can just hold a button to reverse the flow. In another, whatever direction you walk in progresses or reverses the flow of that level’s timeline. They don’t necessarily get more complex, but more unique. Actual difficulty comes from the level designs themselves. Some puzzles will take hours from you, maybe days. They require time away, the solutions coming to you with a slap of the forehead, possibly while you're brushing your teeth or mid-conversation about the last ball game.

So, the pit and gap are no longer an impossibility. A ‘broken’ platforming level transforms into a simple puzzle, and opens up new avenues of thinking in a familiar framework.

The Incredible Machine 2

Release date: 1994 | Developer: Jeff Tunnell Productions | GOG In the opening sequence of Pee-wee Herman’s Big Adventure, the titular weirdo makes breakfast via an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine. A sequence of bizarre, otherwise unrelated objects are made one—a candle burns a rope that drops an anvil and sends a ferris wheel spinning which—you get the idea. All this, just to crack an egg.

The Incredible Machine 2 (not to discount the first) harnessed both the absurdity and ingenuity of Goldberg machines, tasking the player with completing a fairly simple objective by very complex means. And there were plenty of means. You might just have to ‘get the tennis ball into the waste bin’ but you’re given a few treadmills, gears, a hamster on a wheel, a trampoline or two, and maybe a boxing glove to do it. There were ideal solutions each puzzle, but as the game opened up and allowed for use of more tools, the solutions became less prescribed and more up to player creativity. And even though the puzzles got hard very quick, failure was usually funny instead frustrating. It’s this, the open-ended and experimental nature of The Incredible Machine that makes it such a timeless puzzle game.

The Talos Principle

Release date: 2014 | Developer: Croteam | Steam Without the narrative dressing, The Talos Principle is still an amazing puzzle game. The majority of what you do is navigate a series of puzzle rooms, picking up and moving objects (boxes on switches, prisms that connect lasers and open doors, fans, and so on) in order to unlock doors or skirt by defenses in order to grab a tetromino piece, aka, the win condition. While the game introduces the varying tools over time, the whole of what you can accomplish with them is there from the start. As more tools are thrown into increasingly complex puzzles, it becomes a matter of experimentation and order of operations. What can a fan lift? When should the fan lift? How do I power the fan? Each puzzle feels impossible at first, but by the end, the machinations you discover and execute as a player feel so robust, complex, and smart that it’s hard not to feel like the last two hours of brickwalling were actually a breeze.

That The Talos Principle shares a writer with another game on the list, The Swapper, isn’t a surprise. They both deal with similar themes–consciousness, humanity, moral ambiguity—and wrap them around the gameplay in a way that doesn’t feel convoluted or forced. The Talos Principle’s plot is also really well written. It carries the same slow sense of growing uncertainty that Portal pulled off so well at first, and takes it to another level with genuinely smart philosophical, human, and breezy narrative tidbits. So, while you solve individual puzzles, you’re also puzzling out the nature of what you’re doing, and whether or not pursuing certain paths will have any effect at all on the game’s ending. It’s as mind-bendy as mind-benders get.

Release date: 2013 | Developer: Polytron Corporation | Steam Fez is a charming and oddly sad puzzle platformer, but at first glance not a particularly challenging one. Tasked with navigating a peaceful 2D world harried by the arrival of 3D, protagonist Gomez (he wears a Fez) must navigate 3D worlds from a 2D perspective. Sounds confusing! It is, but the simple act of playing the main game through to completion never gets too taxing. The real puzzles in Fez aren’t really required to finish the game, but their impenetrable, mysterious nature invites speculation. They’re puzzles of course, but the way they’re presented feels like archeology: deciphering the meaning in obtuse hieroglyphs and mysterious QR codes. It took the community months to understand how to solve some of these puzzles, and I’m fairly certain some remain uncracked. Play Fez for the beautiful world and breezy tone, stay for one of the toughest challenges hidden in a purportedly ‘easy’ game.

Hexcells Infinite

Release date: 2014 | Developer: Matthew Brown | Steam Hexcells is a slow, methodical game, because you’re penalized for wrong moves—sort of like advanced Minesweeper. The board is made up of, as you’d expect, hexagons. Some are part of the pattern you’re trying to create, and turn blue when you left click them. The rest are not, and when you reveal them as imposters by right-clicking, they show you how many adjacent hexes are part of the pattern. Some also give you extra information, such as whether or not the adjacent blue hexes are adjacent to each other or separated.

Hexcells is about considering simple bits of information and determining what hidden information they reveal. For instance, if an uncovered cell is adjacent to one blue cell, and a blue cell is already uncovered next to it, you can safely count out all the other cells touching it. Pretty simple for simple patterns, but it very quickly becomes tricky, like advanced Sudoku. The feeling when you clear a puzzle with no errors is one of relief more than victory, but it is really satisfying to sweep the board without a single misclick. This one isn’t for those who like to fiddle with a problem until they find a solution—Lyne or Infinifactory come to mind—but for those who like to make deliberate moves for a precision puzzling strike.

Antichamber

Release date: 2013 | Developer: Alexander Bruce | Steam Explaining Antichamber to people is difficult. It’s a stone cold first-person puzzle game, no doubt. There are definite rules in its stripped down corridors and cryptic rooms, they just take an entirely different perspective—sometimes literally—to understand. There’s no invasive narrative precedence to speak of, so the gameplay is reduced to exploration that hinges entirely on the player’s curiosity. You spend the majority of the game encountering strange architecture or tools attempting to decipher if they can be used to traverse through an environment or to clue you in on other rules in Antichamber’s world. Most conventions of how we understand physical space through the first-person perspective are twisted in subtle ways or thrown out completely. To explain how is to ruin the game completely.

Most surfaces, including objects, are white with black lines defining their features, but color gradients sway in and out of certain halls and rooms as if to evoke the intimate, troubling psychosis of our dear friend, MS Paint. The thing is, all the color has meaning. It, and nearly every visual, auditory, and tactile component feed into the game’s psychedelic logic. Learning this logic is only half the battle, the remainder is applying that logic to even more mind-bending puzzles. So, for example, once you learn that certain doors can only be opened if they cannot be seen, applying the same line of thinking to an increasingly complex series of puzzles turns from mental exercise to an exercise in integrity. The more you understand in Antichamber, the less you trust yourself.

World of Goo

Release date: 2008 | Developer: 2D BOY | Steam Like all the best puzzle games, World of Goo's core concept is simple: Use elastic, adhesive (and sentient) balls of goo to build structures that will enable them to climb up to a pipe, where they can be sucked up and delivered to the World of Goo corporate headquarters. It's easygoing at the start—build a tower, construct a bridge, nothing too complex—but quickly grows more difficult, and bizarre, in equal measures. Obstacles like whirling blades, spikes, and fire make life nasty and short for many a Goo Ball, and after awhile different species of Balls with unique characteristics will begin to appear. Balloon Goo floats, for instance, while Green Goo can be detached and reused, and Beauty Goo is huge, aggravating, and generally useless. And because everything is made of goo, everything you create is inherently unstable: The trick isn't to build solid structures, but to figure out how to let them sag and sway—because they're going to—without breaking into pieces.

But what elevates World of Goo from a good puzzler to a great game are the detail and flourishes that aren't necessary to the puzzles, but are absolutely indispensable to creating the marvelous world in which they exist. The squealing, bug-eyed Goo Balls are endearingly cute, and the light-hearted, sometimes cryptic messages left by the Sign Painter are entertaining in their own right. There's a story here too, believe it or not, and it actually gets a little dark, although it never entirely lets go of its inherent goofiness. Even the soundtrack, at the risk of overselling it, is sublime, and somehow a perfect match for a game about stretching sticky globs of grease into weird shapes. World of Goo is one of those games that belongs on just about every "games you should play" list, and it’s baffling that, years after its release, there's still no sign of a sequel.

Infinifactory

Release date: 2015 | Developer: Zachtronics | Steam Infinifactory is one of our highest-scored games of 2015, with Chris calling it his favorite puzzle game in years. Like SpaceChem, Infinifactory is a creative factory design game, though a bit more accessible. To please your alien captors, you’ve got to jetpack around a factory dropping blocks—conveyor belt blocks, for instance—to build a machine that will complete a set of goals. The simplest is to transport a component from a dispenser to the correct exit point, but as your tasks get more complicated, logic devices are introduced to increase the complexity of your designs along with them.

Infinifactory is all about satisfaction of building the most beautiful, efficient machine you can and watching it do its work. As Chris put it, “It's the videogame equivalent of those incredibly compulsive looping gifs of factory processes.” There’s also a dark, slapstick story threaded in, and some wonderful environments in later puzzles.

Portal and Portal 2

Release date: 2007, 2011 | Developer: Valve | Steam Portal was a success—a huge one—for a number of reasons. The writing, the humor, and the story that unexpectedly began to drip through the cracks of Aperture Science while we played Valve’s 2007 first-person puzzler. Thing is, it would still be a great game without any of that because the puzzle-solving is so damn great on its own. Escaping a series of test-chambers armed only with a gun that shoots space-warping portals is fun and rewarding. At the time it was also completely different from just about anything we’d seen in an FPS.

The basics are simple to grasp. After placing two portals in two different spots, walking into one portal lets you exit the other, no matter where it is. Each new puzzle chamber is more complex than the last, and soon you’re using portals to avoid turrets, fling yourself over floors of acid, activate buttons and redirect lasers. There are even some reflex and momentum-based puzzles which challenge you to place your portals as you’re sailing through the air. It culminates in an escape of sorts, a fascinating crawl behind the scenes of the facility where we get to put into practice everything we’ve learned. The difficulty increases gradually, getting more complex at just the right pace, so we never feel frustrated and yet it never seems too easy. There’s even a puzzle-based boss fight, and a charming little song when you win. While Portal 2 upped the ante in just about every department, the original is still a wonderful, funny, and rewarding way to spend a few hours. (And, to be clear, we also recommend Portal 2, especially for its co-op puzzles.)

Baba is You

Release date: 2019 | Developer: Hempuli Oy | Steam Baba Is You gets away with being so infuriatingly mind-bending by also being so dang cute. Baba (you) pushes around blocks of words to change the level environment and the conditions of the game itself. 

In one level you start as a rabbit in a walled room. Inside the room with you are three text blocks—“Wall”, “is”, and “stop”. They’re connected in a straight line so the walls currently stop your character from passing through them. If you nudge any of the blocks out of line the walls no longer stop you and you can walk through them. 

The blocks which make a win condition for the level aren’t yet connected in a line. The simplest solution to that is to push the blocks marked “flag”, “is” and “win” into a line. After that, walking to the flag will complete the level.

But there are other solutions which immediately start to show you how many possibilities the system involves. You could mix blocks from the first and second room to write “Wall is win”. That lets you finish the level by touching any of the walls. 

Although the difficulty curve between levels can feel a bit off-kilter depending on how you personally think about each puzzle, Baba Is You is incredibly versatile, allowing for a number of unorthodox solutions to each level.

Tyler grew up in Silicon Valley during the '80s and '90s, playing games like Zork and Arkanoid on early PCs. He was later captivated by Myst, SimCity, Civilization, Command & Conquer, all the shooters they call "boomer shooters" now, and PS1 classic Bushido Blade (that's right: he had Bleem!). Tyler joined PC Gamer in 2011, and today he's focused on the site's news coverage. His hobbies include amateur boxing and adding to his 1,200-plus hours in Rocket League.

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The 20 Best Puzzle Games on Steam

Is there anything better than a great puzzle game on PC? These games are perfect for those of us who like to take our time to solve problems and plan out their moves well in advance.

If you love puzzles and games, Steam has plenty of great options to choose from.

These titles require players to work out complex problems in order to progress through the game and often present unique challenges that will keep you entertained for hours.

These games will keep your brain busy with logic and problem-solving in some very creative ways, from block-sliding puzzlers to pipe-solving adventures.

Here are 20 of the best puzzle games on Steam you can play right now.

Trine originally debuted in 2009 and took players to a colorful fantasy world where they could fight monsters, rescue fairies, and solve puzzles. It is a side-scrolling fantasy action platformer starring three characters who offer different skills to solve the problems presented in each stage.

This is a brilliant and beautiful franchise that came up with a single concept, you need teamwork. In Trine, you switch characters as you wish to overcome different challenges by using the unique strengths of each hero.

In Trine, you control one character at a time. So you might play with either Zoya the thief, Pontius knight, or Amadeus wizard as they work together to progress through levels.

For instance, you might need Amadeus to lift objects, Zoya to swing and climb, and Pontius to break stuff and fight.

Trine is a generally well-received franchise by both critics and players. To this day, it remains one of Frozenbyte’s most popular titles.

The Talos Principle

This is one of my favorite puzzle games due to its sci-fi philosophical concept and themes where you explore a rich and captivating setting.

You’ll solve puzzles by manipulating robots and utilizing in-game physics. Although they are fun, the puzzles are just one of the things that make this game good.

This is not a game that is all about its gameplay. If that’s what you are looking for, The Talos Principle might still be fun, but you will only be enjoying half of what it offers. This game dives deeply into existential questions and gets you thinking about what it means to be human.

Although it isn’t as flashy as other puzzle games, it does offer challenges that can keep players engaged for many hours. Still, I was mostly interested to see how the narrative would hit me again with some other mind-bending thought exercise.

I would highly recommend any gamer interested in puzzles or philosophy to pick up The Talos Principle. If that’s the kind of thing you are into, this game is a must-play.

The Swapper

A unique puzzle game, The Swapper, has players exploring a space station using the main character’s ability to clone himself to solve puzzles. This is a stylish, well-designed puzzler that is worth your time. The puzzles are never too challenging, but you will be spending a lot of time with them.

The story is a bit complex, but it is very well written. It is really interesting and engaging, making for one of the most memorable experiences in gaming. There’s a fair amount of questions about humanity, existence, and consciousness for all fans of the usual kind of philosophical discussions seen in sci-fi stories.

I can definitely recommend The Swapper to anyone looking for a fun puzzle game on Steam.

It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s something everyone should play at least once. The Swapper is a quite unique, well-thought-out puzzle game. Besides, it is fun even without the fascinating story behind it.

The Witness

The Witness is a puzzle game that surprised me. It is by far one of the most pleasant experiences I’ve ever had with the genre.

In this game, filled with beautiful and mysterious but calm scenarios, you must solve the puzzles you find in panels and direct beams of light to the top of the Island.

The colorful, quiet setting emanates a sense of tranquility while you explore the Island. It gives The Witness a lack of urgency that is refreshing and calming when you are surrounded by puzzles to solve.

This game is not easy. It can cause you to roam lost, desperately looking for answers. This can happen to the fact that the Island is large, and the game doesn’t really lock you in any area.

There is a chance you will face puzzles you might not be ready to solve. If you do, you can just go to a different area and try something else. The Witness will introduce new mechanics and symbols that slowly make the puzzles more challenging and engaging.

This is an intelligently designed puzzle game that is easy to recommend to any fan of the genre.

Portal is a mind-bending game that will force you to think outside your comfort zone. The plot is a bit unorthodox in the best of ways, and it might sometimes feel really over the top, but it’s a game that never takes itself seriously.

When it first came out, Portal was mind-blowing. The Portal Gun makes you think about space-time and physics in ways that would not make sense in any other context.

Thanks to Portal, the portal gun became one of the most popular items in pop culture. The game’s puzzles are inventive and original and take the game’s mechanics to the limit.

Considering that the concept of the game itself was original, it was expected to see many unusual puzzles to solve in Portal. However, the mechanic is pretty much the same until the end of the game, and it is never dull, so it says a lot about the level design.

Portal has a great sense of humor, a story with a dark twist, and a primary tool that might require a certain degree of patience and logic to master. It’s good for quick bursts when you have time to kill or for intense gaming sessions that will keep you busy for hours at a time.

Portal 2 feels much more like a reboot than a sequel to the original Portal game. In fact, it does feel like they’re the same game in many ways until it doesn’t.

Although Portal is a funny game, its dark humor and creepy twists are a big part of its identity. However, Portal 2 takes a different road, being unapologetically silly and directing its comedy to something less dark.

There are enough tweaks and changes in gameplay and storytelling to make Portal 2 something else once you pass through the Portal gun and mouse lab intro. Portal 2 has many different mechanics and easier puzzles with several mechanics that are not present in the first game.

It is argued among fans that Portal 2’s puzzles are never fully fleshed out or explored to their limit, as it happens in the first game. Gameplaywise, this is when the games start feeling completely different. The first game extracts all it can from physics puzzles using the Portal Gun. In contrast, the second game introduces many things that change the rules and moves on to an entirely different mechanic right after.

Despite the fact that Portal 2 lacks the heavier tone of its predecessor, it is nonetheless a well-written game, but a different one, which is why both are on the list.

If you like the original Portal, there’s a good chance you’ll like Portal 2 as well. It makes no difference whether you think the first one is better than the second or vice versa. Both games are fantastic, and I’m sure that any PC puzzle games fan will have a blast playing either.

Braid is a puzzle-platformer where you rewind time to solve puzzles. It’s also one of those games that makes you feel really smart when you figure out how to beat it—which is exactly what we want from puzzle games.

There are tons of little details and secrets in Braid, and each level gets increasingly more complex as you progress through its complex, metaphorical story.

Braid is simple enough for almost anyone to play and understand at first but deep enough for hardcore players looking for challenging brain teasers with multiple levels of completion.

As the game progresses, the way your time rewind ability interferes with the world changes as new mechanics appear in the different phases of the game. Each world has a unique characteristic that is differently affected by time, time reward, or even by how you move your main character.

Due to those new concepts constantly being introduced, Braid ends up being an incredible experience that keeps you playing for hours.

When it comes to puzzle games, Limbo’s unique brand of hand-drawn black and white graphics stands out from its rivals. The game has players take control of a boy who must traverse hellish environments in search of his sister.

For a 2D platformer, Limbo’s atmosphere can be a bit dark. Limbo has levels that are filled with puzzles and obstacles for players to overcome, forcing them to use their brains instead of brute force.

It’s not the most challenging puzzle game out there, but it is entertaining enough to be remarkable. Although it was originally released in 2010, Limbo remains one of the top puzzle games on Steam.

Limbo is not a long game, but by playing through its world, you’ll see why so many people have fallen in love with it. Even if you’re not typically into puzzle games, I recommend giving Limbo a try; perhaps you’ll find yourself pleasantly surprised by what you discover.

Valiant Hearts: The Great War

Valiant Hearts: The Great War is a puzzle game set during World War I that follows several characters from different sides of the conflict.

The game features puzzles to solve with help from your canine companion and follow narratives based on real-life letters and journals of men and women who lived during that time.

It’s a heartfelt and touching adventure for people looking for a historical setting for their puzzle games or anyone curious about life in France during World War I.

This game is a beautifully crafted artistic expression of a harsh and difficult era of human history. Its story has a few ups and serious downs. It might not be for everyone, and it is a hard story to tell, but it’s told brilliantly.

World of Goo

World of Goo is a charming game with a simple but cute art style and an attractive enough. This award-winning physics-based puzzle game is a favorite among fans.

Players are tasked with creating bridges and towers out of balls of goo, guiding other balls to their goals, and escaping each level before they fall off. As you solve puzzles and make your way through increasingly challenging levels, you’ll be kept entertained by adorable sound effects and a minimalist aesthetic.

World of Goo is a game for kids as well as adults. It is easy to pick up but hard to put down. World of Goo was made by 2D Boy, an indie gaming duo consisting of Kyle Gabler and Ron Carmel. Its graphics were designed to resemble beloved construction toys, making the game both familiar and charming.

This is a fun game that can be pretty entertaining to play casually, but it can also be addictive if you’re fond of puzzle games on PC. Give it a shot; you might be surprised at how challenging and addicting it can be.

Baba is You

This game is so much fun! It may not look like it, but Baba Is You actually has some of the most mentally engaging gameplay in any puzzle game I’ve ever played. It’s a game that is constantly forcing you to think outside the box because the puzzles involve changing the fundamental laws of how the game works in the first place.

I know it sounds weird and a bit crazy, but that’s pretty much how the game is. The more you play, the more you want to see what kind of weird things you have to come up with to progress.

Even though Baba is You might be a really unusual game in many ways, you don’t really feel frustrated since every puzzle somehow feels doable. When it comes to unique puzzle gameplay, it’s hard to be as unique as Baba is You.

This is a fantastic game with an unusual concept that managed to work against all odds. I definitely recommend you to try this game out, even if you don’t like puzzle games just for their uniqueness.

That is a game that will easily please fans of the genre. Hoa is a puzzle-platforming game with a lot of personalities due to its emotionally charged music and hand-painted art style.

Hoa is the ideal game for when you want to be entertained by your favorite genre, but you also want to relax and admire a beautiful work of art as opposed to getting disappointed or frustrated after spending an hour on the same puzzle.

The world of the game is diverse and beautifully designed with breathtaking art. Besides, Hoa is relatively simple. The game’s mechanics are not complicated, so you get to enjoy it easily.

There’s no question that Hoa has a lot of charm and identity. This game is so captivating that it is nearly impossible not to give it a shot. That’s how they make people play, by causing them to check a beautiful, hand-drawn game. I checked Hoa out of curiosity, and I was hooked right from the start.

In my honest opinion, Biped is a game that does not receive as much attention as it deserves. This game is a puzzle-platformer with a lot of heart. Its cute design and fun gameplay are more than enough for me to recommend it. 

Biped’s unique gameplay mechanics make it very special. In this game, you must move each leg of the main character independently. That alone completely changes how you navigate the 3D environment and solve issues.

Even walking can be a struggle since you have to move each leg individually, one before the other. It might take you some time to get used to it, but that’s what allows this game to think outside the box and provide some of the greatest and most fun puzzles you’ll see in a cute puzzle game that doesn’t feel intimidating.

The Room is a BAFTA-winning 3D puzzler from Fireproof Games where you immerse yourself in a world of strange contraptions and alchemical machines. This game takes you to a setting where machines meet myth. You will follow a trail of cryptic cards and solve numerous unusual devices in even more extraordinary places.

The Steam version of The Room is a completely updated HD version of the original Mobile Version of The Room, but it still is the same game. I do prefer playing it on the PC anyway.

Fireproof Games is a tiny, independent studio based in Guildford, United Kingdom. The Room is the first game they ever published, but they made an excellent product. The Room has been very well received by puzzle game fans and reviewers, which did a lot for the game’s reputation and the studio.

There’s a reason why this game received so many prizes for best gameplay and best design. The Room has clearly been acknowledged among critics as a magnificent game of its genre.

Little Nightmares

Little Nightmares is surprisingly scary for a game that uses such a cartoon-like art style. You play as a kid in a yellow coat who’s trying to survive and escape from a massive and strange ship populated by corrupted souls vying for the next meal.

This is an unnerving dark tale that will cause nightmares to your inner child! Explore the most unsettling settings to uncover their secrets as you proceed on your trip. 

Mechanically speaking, Little Nightmares takes a lot from games like Limbo and modern survival games that have a hiding mechanic. Still, the way it’s used and the way that the setting is put together make Little Nightmare a quite well-executed game. It might not be the most challenging puzzle game out there, but if you like horror, it is undoubtedly worth your time.

Although this game is a brilliant puzzle platformer, its meaning, plot, and ending are mysteries open to interpretation. The many discussions and fan theories about Inside exist mainly due to the way that the game’s story is told, especially in its endings.

Inside is a puzzle platformer in which the player is a boy who explores a nearly gritty, nearly black-and-white world where there are many threads about to end his life.

The boy can run, jump, and use some objects to overcome certain challenges. Later in the game, the boy gains the ability to control the bodies of the dead. Sometimes, this new power can feel like a weirdly dark and somewhat disturbing idea.

Still, it does allow the game to introduce new and exciting mechanics and puzzles. The main character can die, much like in Limbo, from enemies and from challenges that you did not succeed in completing. Death animations are often brutal, making you feel like a lot is at stake after the first time you see it happening.

When it comes to puzzles, at least in my opinion, it isn’t easy to find anything that is more authentic than klocki. Something about its minimalistic style feels like old-school puzzle games, but there’s enough in its design to make it feel clean and modern.

In this game, you basically have a bunch of tiles or pieces, and you have to switch and match all those pieces in a way that the lines are not broken.

Klocki doesn’t repeat itself too much. However, it will sometimes introduce new ways to move the pieces and add variations that keep things interesting when there aren’t really new ideas to be introduced.

This is the second game from the developers of Hook, and it is pretty well rated on Steam. If you are okay with a minimalistic art style and a more relaxing kind of puzzle game, you should definitely give klocki a shot.

Opus Magnum

This game was very well received by critics and players. It is an open-ended puzzle game from Zachtronics.

In Opus Magnum, you do alchemical engineering by building transmutation machines that you even get to watch running.

I’m not going to lie; this is an odd game. For many people, this might feel like doing homework. On the other hand, once you get the hang of it and see your formula in action, you feel pretty smart for pulling it off.

Honestly, though, watching your design functioning is already super pleasant to see, but making it compact and faster is just as fun — for those who enjoy this sort of open-ended puzzle, of course.

Agent A: A Puzzle in Disguise

I seriously love self-aware games, so there was no way I wouldn’t like Agent A: A puzzle in disguise.

As the brilliant title suggests, you play as Agent A in this clever puzzle game. You are given the mission to invade Ruby La Rouge’s secret hideout. Once you succeed, you have to either neutralize or capture the enemy spy.

Once you have the chance or the patience, pay attention to this stylized art style. It allows the game to be functional and have an eye-catching theme. It also makes it much easier for smaller studios to put the game together than making or paying for something with high fidelity graphics.

Explore a maze of mind-blowing puzzles in this quirky cat-and-mouse game that will have you wondering who’s the cat and who’s the mouse! Did you find something strange or out of place? You must think like a good secret agent, so taking notes and mental observations will help you solve the most important puzzles.

In Ruby’s secret hideout, you will be picking up objects and using them in clever ways. Sometimes, you will have to think outside the box to progress through the puzzles that will get you closer to your target!

Superliminal

If you are looking for the most original puzzle game on Steam, I couldn’t find anything that remotely feels like what Superliminal has to offer.

This puzzle game focuses on using optical illusions and depth perspective to make the most unique and clever puzzles I have ever seen in a long time.

When I solve a puzzle in Superliminal, I often catch myself just thinking about how cool that puzzle was. The best thing about this game is that it keeps happening. It never takes too long for the game to surprise me with another fantastic twist on how to use depth perspective in the game’s context.

In the world of Superliminal, what is perceived is what is real. This game’s surreal, strange, dream-like world is like a weird place where things can be both what they are and what they seem to be.

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Best Games That Reward Creative Problem-Solving

• As video game technology advances, puzzles have become more open-ended, allowing for creative solutions and multiple outcomes.
• Games like Portal 2 and Baldur's Gate 3 reward players for thinking creatively and finding unique ways to solve problems.
• Undertale and Scribblenauts Unlimited offer players the freedom to approach puzzles in their own way, showcasing the importance of player choice.

In the early days of video games, puzzles and their solutions were pretty cut and dry. Get from Point A to Point B, and accomplish A, B, and C using a very specific method. There was only one way to beat the game; players just needed to find it. Part of this was due to hardware and scripting limitations. Consoles had such limited memory that there simply wasn't room for more creative solutions.

11 Best Puzzle Games On Steam That Deserve More Attention

But as video games and consoles become more advanced, puzzle-solving in games has become more open-ended. Developers are now usually more than happy to hand players the reins and let them run wild with their creativity. All the pieces are there; players just need to put them together. There are no right or wrong answers, just what works and what doesn't, and for those looking to flex their creative puzzle-solving muscles and get rewarded for doing so , there are plenty of gaming options available.

Peace is Always An Option

Platform(s) PS Vita, Switch, PS4, PC, Xbox One

Released September 15, 2015

Developer(s) Toby Fox

Genre(s) RPG

This 2015 smash hit revolutionized puzzle-solving and story progression in RPG adventure games, being one of the first where players could complete the entire game without killing a single enemy. Instead, they could choose the Pacifist route and befriend NPCs instead (or go from killing a single enemy to all of them in the notorious Genocide route ).

Beyond the multiple endings, Undertale is filled with puzzles to overcome, not all of which have a single solution. Is a dastardly skeleton placing a maze trap before the fallen human? They might be able to solve it, or they can opt to simply walk around it. New dialogue options and story branches open and close based on who the player chooses to spare and how. The reward for creative puzzle-solving is that players get to explore more of this colorful world and iconic characters.

Scribblenauts Unlimited

The noun's the limit.

Platform(s) Wii U, Switch, PS4, PC, iOS, Android, 3DS, Xbox One

Released November 13, 2012

Developer(s) 5th Cell

Genre(s) Puzzle, Sandbox

Scribblenauts proves that the pen is indeed mightier than the sword. No, seriously. The titular heroes in this popular puzzle RPG series use the power of words to solve all their problems. Players can write down a noun and watch it appear in the world. Giving it an adjective results in the object or creature transforming to match its new description. Giving a pig wings will allow it to fly, and manifesting some glue out of the ether will permit players to stick things together. The possibilities are literally endless.

Scribblenauts Unlimited builds on its predecessors with an expansive list of nouns, adjectives, and adverbs that players can use and provides multiple ways to solve each puzzle. The game doesn't care how players accomplish their goals, so long as they clear the level's main objective. The only real limit is the player's imagination (and their vocabulary).

Aperture Science Tests One's Creativity

Platform(s) PS3, Switch, Xbox 360, PC

Released April 18, 2011

Developer(s) Valve

Genre(s) Puzzle, Platformer

The Portal games make no secret that they want to test players' problem-solving abilities. The game's central antagonist, GLaDOS , makes that abundantly clear. In fact, the entire plot is to use those same skills to escape the testing facility once and for all. Each test follows the same simple premise: get to the end of the testing chamber in one piece. How the player does it is up to them - and the game's physics engine. Jump through portals, avoid deadly turrets and bottomless pits, propel through the air -- it doesn't matter. As the saying goes, "If it's stupid and it works, it isn't stupid."

Portal 2 takes this engaging premise and amps it up to eleven. Puzzles are bigger, deadlier, and more complicated than ever before. While some answers are laid out more obviously than others, players are free to ignore those options and think outside the box as much as they want. So long as they reach the final door, GLaDOS doesn't mind how they did it. After all, data is data.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Zonai devices help players reinvent the wheel.

Platform(s) Switch

Released May 12, 2023

Developer(s) Nintendo

Genre(s) Adventure

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was a massive breath of fresh air for the franchise. Linear adventures with clear-cut solutions were swapped out for a massive open world and a fun new physics engine that led to infinitely creative gameplay. Many fans of the series felt the game essentially reinvented the wheel of a franchise that had started to get a bit formulaic. However, its direct sequel, Tears of the Kingdom , didn't just reinvent the wheel; it allowed players to invent their own.

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On top of the many new mechanics introduced in Breath of the Wild , Tears of the Kingdom introduced several new mechanics for players to tinker around with. The best by far is the introduction of Zonai devices, allowing players to use various moving mechanical parts in endless combinations to solve puzzles. Gamers can build siege engines that breathe fire, gliders powered by fans, or massive catapaults to launch enemies (or themselves) off into the horizon.

Baldur's Gate 3

Any solution is just a dice roll away.

Platform(s) Xbox Series X, PS5, PC, macOS, Stadia

Released August 3, 2023

Developer(s) Larian Studios

This award-winning RPG action-adventure game from 2023 famously adapted the core rules of Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition into a video game format. But the game didn't just take the basic stats and mechanics; it went above and beyond to allow players to think just as creatively as they would while playing real D&D . Any D&D campaign can go off the rails at any moment. One bad dice roll or truly chaotic player choice, and there will be consequences. That's what makes the game so fun, and Baldur's Gate 3 understands this.

No two playthroughs of Baldur's Gate 3 are the same, thanks to the infinite array of choices , dice checks, and consequences. Players are rewarded for seeing just how many different ways they can solve the same problem. Do they exterminate the goblin camp or side with them? Can they pickpocket the vendor for powerful items to avoid paying? Can they talk their way out of being arrested, either through smooth-talking or saber-rattling? Every decision opens doors and closes others. Each interaction can forge new allies or enemies. Every quest has multiple endings, good or bad. Players can play the campaign however they want and will be rewarded for their creative thinking along the way.

Puzzle Games You Have To Be A Genius To Complete

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Top 10 Puzzle Games To Play Right Now

A good puzzle is one of the best things in life. Some are relaxing time-killers, while others test our skills in critical problem solving or quick mental gymnastics; both can be incredibly satisfying. Video games can elevate these head-scratching problems to new heights and complexities by immersing you in a setting, messing with concepts like the tenants of time and space, or by simply giving you endless access to your favorite brainteasers. Here are some of our favorite modern puzzle games listed in no particular order , that you can play right now that will pleasantly twist your brain into knots.

Tetris Effect – Connected

Let’s be honest. Tetris is already in the conversation of being one of the greatest games of all time. Luckily, we’ve been recently graced with an awesome entry in the series with Tetris Effect: Connected. This take on the concept comes from the mind of Tetsuya Mizuguchi, the man behind games like Rez and Lumines, who sculpts the tetromino-dropping gameplay into a complete sensory experience. Each stage has its own visual and audio theme that changes as you play. Music will swell as the scenery pulses, and flipping your Tetris pieces becomes a new note to the symphony of sounds. It’s a wholly unique experience in the puzzle space, and what’s even better: Tetris Effect is a darn good version of Tetris. Compete with others in the new Connected expansion or experience Effect a transcendent way in VR on PlayStation 4 or PC. | Our Review

Capybara’s mountain climbing hack and slash puzzler was a standout of the Apple Arcade launch in 2019. As a beefy berserker named Jorj, each level of Grindstone has you drawing your path of destruction through colorful, and sometimes dangerous, critters called creeps to escape the level. Jorj can only cut through subsequent creeps of the same color unless he crosses paths with a Grindstone. Picking one up along the way allows Jorj to change the targeted type of creep and build even longer and more devastating combos. Along the over 200 levels of pinnacle peril, blueprints and gear can be collected and crafted to assist in surviving the treacherous ascent to the peak. While it debuted on Apple devices, Grindstone can now be found on Switch and PC as well.

Baba Is You

Easily one of the most unique games in years, Baba Is You takes a seemingly simple premise of changing the properties of objects in the world and uses that to solve mind-melting conundrums. The rules of the game are physically present in each level. Blocks scattered about like “Baba” or “Tree” or “Wall” refer to actual parts around the stage. They can be pushed around and joined with verb blocks such as “Is” to create new realities. “You” represents what the player is able to control and move around the playfield where the goal of every level is to get whatever “You” happens to be to reach a goal flag. You can be lava. You can be a wall. You can be the goal flag itself, and each of these objects can be each other.  Come with your metaphysical galaxy brain equipped to take on some of these complex puzzles and get ready to rejoice when figuring out entirely out-of-the-box solutions. Baba is fun. Baba is tough. But most importantly, Baba Is You will scratch that puzzle itch like no other. | Our Review

Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker

Breaking out of the bonus scenarios from Super Mario 3D World, Captain Toad: Treasure Trackers takes those fun puzzle levels and builds an entire game around it. As the adventurous Captain Toad, you’ll explore diorama-like areas in search of precious Power Stars. The catch? Every cleverly built level is designed to be completed without the ability to jump. You’ll have to navigate these charming labyrinths, and solve environmental puzzles with the help of levers, duplicating fruits, moving platforms, and good old-fashioned camera perspective. Captain Toad offers experiences ranging from chill brain teasers to precision pathing through a stage, but typically lets you take things at your own pace. It’s a charming, refreshing take on familiar locals and ideas from the Mario franchise, and one of the great puzzlers to play on Switch right now. | Our Review

Nonograms, the puzzle presented in the long history of Picross games from developer Jupiter Corporation, are like picture crosswords. You’re presented with a grid with numbers aligned with each column and row, which inform how many squares in that section are supposed to be filled in by the player. Though, it’s not quite paint-by-numbers. To solve the puzzle correctly, you’ll have to consider all of the information given around the board to determine which spaces to fill in and which to leave empty. Eventually, a full image is revealed, like a pixelated painting the player helped produce. Picross puzzles are intoxicating, relaxing, and incredibly enjoyable to solve. The newest edition in Jupiter’s Switch series is Picross S6, which offers stellar tutorials for those new to this kind of puzzle as well as massive 40x30 grid boards for the Picross veterans. With almost 500 puzzles to complete, Picross S6 will keep many busy for quite a while. 

Images aren’t always what they seem, and in Gorogoa, you have the power to shift and manipulate a series of pictures to find the true meaning in the visuals. Each puzzle presents the player with up to four photos that must be placed in a specific alignment to be solved. You can take each segment and manipulate them in different ways, like zooming in or out of the scene on display or changing the position of the image like a slide puzzle. Adjusting these photos can shift the perspective of what you’re looking at entirely, making the seemingly disparate images fit together perfectly. Gorogoa is a joy to look at with its spectacular art. The experience is on the shorter end, so if you’re looking to relax on a weekend afternoon, Gorogoa is a fantastic way to spend your time. | Our Review

The Witness

Jonathan Blow’s open world puzzle adventure The Witness is a masterclass in design. Starting on an island with no context of where or when you are, you only have one way to interact with the world: drawing lines or paths on designated panels strewn about the environment. Each set of these screens found around the island adds new rules to how you need to draw your route from point A to B to complete the puzzle. These rules are sussed out by intuition or trial and error, though as you progress through The Witness, puzzle elements and clues for drawing the correct paths on panels may be inspired by your surroundings. So it’s essential to keep your eyes and, most importantly, your mind open to solve some of the more important and exciting mysteries on the island. We’ll leave it at that as The Witness is at its best when starting with the bare minimum knowledge and letting the experience build until you realize what’s actually possible. | Our Review

The Turing Test

Originally released in 2016 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, with a Switch version in 2020, The Turing Test puts you in the shoes of Ava Turing. Confined in a laboratory, Ava is tasked to complete a series of tests that only humans can solve. These test chambers are designed by an artificial intelligence named T.O.M., which observes Ava’s progress throughout the experimentation. Armed with an Energy Manipulation Tool, you can pull energy nodes from objects to redistribute into other devices to solve the puzzle at hand. Sometimes, the simplest answer isn’t the correct one, though. T.O.M.’s contraptions will require you to think outside the box and “cheat” the tests in various ways. For example, you may find yourself navigating a maze but decide to hop over the walls instead of sticking to the labyrinth floor. The Turing Tests convoluted rooms will likely keep you busy for quite some time, while also delivering a worthwhile tale between Ava and T.O.M. | Our Review

The Room: Old Sins

Part virtual puzzle box, part spooky escape room, The Room series has been delivering satisfying brainteasers for years. Its most recent iteration, called Old Sins, can be found on iOS, Android, and PC. Old Sins has you exploring an unsettling dollhouse where each room holds several puzzles and secrets to unravel. Items can be found and examined, giving clues for solving a mystery. Important objects made of a substance called the Null, which is said to have the power to warp reality, can also be used to progress. Puzzle solutions aren’t contained to just one area, as some more significant problems will have you exploring all over the house to resolve. The Room: Old Sins’ biggest strengths are in its atmosphere and detail. Every object you interact with feels old and ornate but at the same time advanced and intricate. There’s almost a sinister quality in the air, enhancing the urgency to get through each puzzle and move on to learning all of the secrets within the dollhouse. | Our Review

A decade after its release, playing with portals is still as fun as ever. Portal 2 takes everything that was great about the brief first-person puzzle game from Valve’s Orange Box and builds upon it substantially. The basics of Portal rely on the portal gun, which lets the user project two portals on surfaces like walls, floors, ceilings, allowing you to pass through from one to the other as if they were simply doorways. Following the events of Portal, series heroine Chell has to escape an Aperture Science facility yet again, while learning of the company’s sometimes hilarious, but always intriguing, history from its founder, Cave Johnson.

There are all kinds of fresh takes on the portal gun gameplay messing with gravity, inertia, dopey sentient gun turret target systems, and much more. Goopy liquids called Gels can be used to paint the test facilities, with each color of the substance allowing Chell to bounce, move faster, or place portals on surfaces not normally meant to hold them. Portal 2 also features an entirely separate cooperative campaign where two players take the roles of robots named ATLAS and P-body. Co-op requires just as much creative problem solving, timing, and coordination as the single-player levels but asks it of both players. Are you looking to start “thinking with portals?” The best ways to experience this puzzle classic on modern hardware is on Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One X via backward compatibility or the ever-reliable PC version. | Our Review

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The Best Problem-solving Games

• Wood Nuts & Bolts, Screw
• Math Puzzle Games - Cross Math
• Found It! Hidden Object Game
• DOP 5: Delete One Part
• My Doge: Puzzle Game
• Wood Nuts & Bolts Puzzle
• Release date: New first
• Review score: Best first
• IOS (iPhone / iPad)
• PS4 (Playstation 4)
• PS5 (Playstation 5)
• Xbox Series X
• Oculus Rift

qomp2 (2024)

An artful reimagining of Pong. Control a Pong ball aching to break free of its life stuck between two paddles. Explore a dangerous, minimalist world, armed with simple two button controls.

• problem-solving
• experimental
• exploration

Wood Nuts & Bolts, Screw (2023)

Get ready to embark on a mechanical journey like no other in Wood Nuts & Bolts, Screw Puzzle. With each level, the puzzles become more intricate and satisfyingly complex. Freely twisted, unscrew and screw pin to solve Bolts.

Math Puzzle Games - Cross Math (2023)

Crossmath is a fun and engaging math puzzle game that tests your problem-solving skills. The game features a variety of levels and difficulty settings, so you can find the perfect challenge for your math skill level. To play, you'll need to solve a series of math problems, using addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

• competitive

Found It! Hidden Object Game (2022)

Find all hidden objects by moving around the interactive maps and completing quests to unlock new colorful locations. Use hints to put your target and find it. You can also zoom in, out, and swipe through every corner of the map.

• friends-and-family
• interactive

DOP 5: Delete One Part (2023)

Using your finger as an eraser, pick which part of the picture you want to delete to solve the puzzle and reveal the final image. Progress through levels of varying difficulty as the questions become more complicated.

Syllatiles (2023)

Syllatiles is the ultimate word puzzle game that challenges you to decipher a word, then locate its various parts and assemble them in the correct order. With a multitude of levels and mind-bending riddles to solve, Syllatile promises endless hours of entertainment and mental stimulation.

• mind-bending
• entertainment

My Doge: Puzzle Game (2023)

My dog - dog head swollen is an original puzzle game, which contains a large number of brain-burning levels, each level, there is a dog head waiting for you to open your mind to save him. The abundance of creative and interesting puzzle questions may break common sense and bring you a whole new experience. This is a great tool for friends and family to spend time together, so download it and experience a different kind of puzzle game!

Super Kye (2024)

**Super Kye** is a puzzle adventure with unique challenges and a level editor. Navigate mazes, solve puzzles, and unlock levels in a game where strategy meets creativity.

Piece Link (2024)

Connect the shapes to fit them together!

• visual-novel
• point-and-click
• challenging
• family-friendly

Wood Nuts & Bolts Puzzle (2023)

Wood Nuts & Bolts Puzzle is a captivating game designed to challenge your problem-solving skills. Master the art of strategically rotating wooden bolts to fit them into place. Embark on a journey through 100+ levels.

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The best puzzle games on PC

A very puzzling collection

Whether you like to visit space , indulge in an RPGs or a grand adventure , get spooked by horror or get uber techy with hacking , the chances are that there's also a puzzle game for you - hence our list of the best puzzle games on PC . The queen genre straddles many others, so our list of the 25 best puzzle games has all that we just mentioned and more. Take a look to find a new favourite puzzle game today.

We've got everything a puzzle-head might want: sokoban games, murder mysteries, strategy, physics, goo, and that one Jonathan Blow made. Puzzles are a broad church, after all. Best of all is that all of these are playable and ready to go, so there's no mucking about with emulators. We'll keep the list updated with the new best and brightest puzzle games, too, so check back every so often. Scroll down to read them all, or click a name that takes your fancy in the list below.

• How To Say Goodbye
• The Room 4: Old Sins
• The White Door
• Children Of The Sun
• The Case Of The Golden Idol
• Mini Motorways
• Patrick's Parabox
• Dorfromantik
• Baba Is You
• Botany Manor
• Return To Monkey Island
• Opus Magnum
• The Talos Principle
• Ctrl Alt Ego
• World Of Goo
• The Witness
• Outer Wilds
• Return Of The Obra Dinn

25. Unpacking

There may be some among you who object to Unpacking being classified as a puzzle game, and to those people I say: Boo! Boo to you! It's not the kind of headscratcher that'll see you rage-quitting a level until you've calmed down enough to have another go at it, but the challenge - to unpack and put away a person's possessions as they move to different homes throughout their life - is a puzzle. It's possible to get it wrong. As you open the brown boxes and pull things out of the rustling paper, you understand that it would not do to put the tooth paste in the kitchen. That goes in the bathroom, along with your towels and shampoo. If, once you've emptied all the boxes, some things aren't where they're meant to be, their outline will glow until you make room somewhere more appropriate. A ladle does not belong in the bedroom.

Part of the puzzle is fitting your things around the possessions of people you live with. If you move in with housemates, one of whom is making a Sailor Moon cosplay dress, there isn't much space in the living room. One level in particular broke my heart, as you have to find the right place to put your framed art degree once you move in with a new boyfriend. Unpacking isn't a puzzle like doing the cryptic crossword is. Unpacking is a puzzle like real life is.

24. How To Say Goodbye

This is sort of a sokoban, except you move the scenery around, and that allows you to move the characters. As a whole, the game tells the story of a recently-dead ghost, lost and disorientated in a land of the dead populated by simiarly disorientated spirits. The goal is to help these spirits move on, by solving the grid puzzles in levels to let them escape the purgatory world they're in. Each level has a door to escape through, but you might need to press buttons, find keys and avoid desperate Spleen ghosts. Many levels have several steps, and it'll take you a while to get the hang of how you can move things to you, rather than going to them. It's a twist on a familiar formula that will surprise you with how hard it can be.

The art is colourful and streamlined, inspired by children's picture books. It gives everything an appropriately unreal quality as you pull and push ghosts and obstacles around on the conveyor belt floors of the levels. And the levels themselves fit with that vibe. They're downright whimisical, from gardens, to messy kitchens, to the actual moon. But with the whimsy you also get a quiet story about grief and moving on. A lot to pack in one game.

23. The Room 4: Old Sins

The Room series always sees you, the unknown player character, lured to an isolated area full of complex puzzles that you have to solve. The very first Room was a room - an attic, in fact, and The Room 4 goes back to the attic. This time you're confronted with a very detailed dollhouse of a mansion, which turns out to be a model of the mansion you're in. The model is itself partly a puzzle box, with moving cogs and sections that open up as you interact with it, but it also, as you open up access to the different rooms, is a kind of magic portal to full-sized versions of said rooms. Inside these rooms are more puzzles.

The Room 4 is full of so many lovely machines: polished wood with hidden doors, polished cogs, sliding coloured pieces and buttons, and they all feel intricate and tactile, and like they were made by a craftsman. But there's a dark, almost Lovecraftian layer to The Room 4 as well, with many puzzles requiring the use of a magical eyepiece to see runes and symbols instrumental to understanding the solutions. There are tentacles. Old Sins is the most complicated but most satisfying of all the Room games yet.

22. The White Door

Not all puzzle games have to be maxi. The White Door is one of the more recent entries in the Rusty Lake series of 2D puzzle games, and is arguably the most minimalist. You control an amnesiac in what appears to be some kind of hospital room, where each day is planned out to a strict schedule. The game doesn't tell you this, of course, but the schedule is pinned to the wall for you to find. A nurse comes in to ask you questions: what's today's date?; how old are you?; where do you work? And you have to find the answers to these questions around the room. Subtle things change. You can see someone standing in the distance outside the window.

Every night you dream of events in your past, and can use them to untangle the events that brought you to this room in the first place. It's a short, spare game with nothing wasted. A locked room mystery with a twist.

21. Gorogoa

Gorogoa was designed for touchscreens, but you're not losing much at all when you play it on PC. The screen is divided into quarters, and you can zoom in and move them around to create new paths for the boy traversing them, letting him move from one to another by clearing a path in one section. You can even layer them on top of one another, putting a doorway in one frame over the top of the boy in another, so he can step through. At other times the panels becomes a kind of jigsaw that requires you to zoom in and out until you find the right perspective to match things up. You might need to place a fire under a steam cooker, or weight a shelf so it tips the right way.

This all plays out in beautiful 2D animations, and without any actual instructions. Gorogoa is fantastic and letting you experiment, sometimes nudging you the right way with some pictograms, but for the most part just letting you explore its living, moving world. It's both beautiful and innovative, in a way not many games of any genre manage, let alone puzzle games.

PlayDead's creepy, monochrome side-scrolling puzzle-platformer Limbo rightly caused a stir when it was released, because nobody had seen anything quite like it before. PlayDead managed to build on Limbo with Inside. Though Inside has a lot of similarities - a side on puzzle-platformer with a small, vulnerable protagonist, and dark themes - but it takes both it's ambient storytelling and how it plays to new heights. Inside's protagonist is a young boy who you join in the middle of being chased through a forest. The journey progresses through decreasingly rural areas, then through a weird science facility full of what appear to be mind controlled zombies and various human experiments. The ending is famously, er, surprising.

The puzzles themselves are a mix of logic applied to physics (put box a here and activate switch b to precipitate effect c) in surprising ways, and you can die in similar physics based ways that have quite graphic animations. But there are also puzzles that you solve by paying attention to the game world. One of the more memorable moments is having to disguise yourself in a line on shambling zombies by mimicking their movements at the right time. I don't know if that counts as a puzzle, exactly, but it's bloody good.

19. Children Of The Sun

The puzzles in Children Of The Sun are intricate, speed focused tactical puzzles to find the right path through a level, and that path must be through a bunch of dudes' heads. After escaping from an evil cult you, a nameless girl, have taken it upon yourself to exact revenge for the death of your mentor. Luckily you can do this with your natural telekinetic powers, meaning you can take out dozens of cultists with a single bullet. You begin each level skulking on the edges - in the darkness looking at a street, a warehouse, a drunken party in the forest - where you line up your shot. Once you pull the trigger, you play over the shoulder of the bullet.

Each time you hit a target you can reorient and shoot it again, tracing the bullet around the whole level by daisy chaining bloody and spectacular murder. But if you hit a wall or an obstacle, that's it. It's a short game, but it invites repetition as you perfect your kill score for each level, using different powers - like the ability to change direction, or speed up to penetrate armour - in an arms race against the cultists, who start showing up with shields and their own psy-powers as your reign of terror continues. Children Of The Sun is satisfying, intense, and ultraviolent, which isn't something you can say about a lot of puzzle games

18. The Case Of The Golden Idol

The Case Of The Golden Idol is a point and click detective game that strips out all the extraneous bullshit like walking around and talking to characters, so the time you save there can be redistributed to furiously staring at word bubbles. The Case Of The Golden Idol spans many decades in the lives of a couple of posh weirdos and their family and associates, all centering on the titular artifact. Every few years there are some (or several) murders relating to it, and you get to see them in a snapshot moment - either the moment the murder is committed or as the body is discovered - with the characters, scene and items all frozen.

By clicking around the scene you can investigate the contents of rooms, pockets and even brains, sorting through diaries and weapons and piecing together what happened. To solve each leve you'll need to identify who died, whodunnit, and what they dunnit with, but there are also optional tasks. At a dinner party where someone was poisoned you need to work out who was sitting where, but you can also figure out which of the servants' rooms belong to which servant. In one memorable level at a mansion, more than one person is on a different sort of drug. To fill in these answers you're provided with nouns and verbs to slot into sentences with gaps, and you can only move on when you get it right. It's difficult, but it's very worth it.

17. Mini Motorways

Have you ever been stuck in traffic commuting and thought, "what absolute fool designed this?" Now, thanks to Mini Motorways, that absolute fool can be you! The idea is to plan the road system of a city, getting people from their houses to where they need to be and back again, as efficiently as possible. The cities grow as the game goes on, so your roadways get more complicated, and you can put in things like roudabouts, motorways and traffic lights to keep things organised, but you have a limited number of these, as well as limited road tiles.

Houses, the population centres of your city, and workplaces keep mushrooming up across the confined map area, and they're colour-coded. A yellow workplace might appear next to a bunch of blue homes, while the yellow population density is mostly on the other side of the river. Junctions slow down traffic, so if you can put in roundabouts it all flows better, but roundabouts take up a lot of space. Maybe a motorway would help ease the congestion, but it might back up traffic either end. Mini Motorways is a continuous puzzle, in other words, and one that only gets harder the better you are at it.

16. Patrick's Parabox

The ouroboros is the ol' famous endless snake eating it's own tail thing. Patrick's Parabox is a bunch of boxes inside boxes, boxes eating eachother recursively, with puzzles inside. It's technically a sokoban game - you have to push boxes into the right places, and if you push them against a wall you can't pull them out. But you can push boxes (and yourself) into other boxes that have openings. These boxes themselves contain shapes that you can use to traverse and solve the puzzle outside the box. You have to think in boxes.

There are 350 hand-designed puzzles in this mind melter of a game, and Patrick's Parabox does a good job of teaching you the fundamentals of its rules so you can tackle more advanced puzzles. You can transport boxes inside boxes. You can put a box inside itself and start thinking in infinity. Multiple boxes can be stacked inside other boxes, like nesting dolls. Look, this game has a lot of boxes. It's an interesting and thoughtful twist on sokoban constraints that kind of makes you feel like a super-advanced mathematician.

15. Knotwords

This is sort of like doing a quick crossword but without any clues. You're given a small asymmetrical grid of empty squares, and within that grid are tetronimo shapes - maybe a foursquare, maybe a right angle made of three, and so on. You're told what letters go into each of the tetronimos, but not where. So that foursquare could contain the letters OVOW . Your job is to fill in all the letters so that every line accross and down makes an actual word.

This isn't as hard as it sounds, and you get into the swing of it pretty quickly. It can be tough when you realise that the word you were sure was your lynchpin turns out to be wrong, but there's a fair and helpful hint system. You also have a lot of puzzles to choose from, with more generating every month. It's a lot of fun if you like word puzzles, and it'll probably expand your vocabulary, too.

14. Dorfromantik

Dorfromantik is a lovely game. It's perfect for streaming. It's perfect for playing sitting on the sofa. You can get all intense and try and beat your high score and take it all seriously. But if you want, you can just have a lovely time building a pretty town. All these things are contained within Dorfromantik, a puzzle game where you place tiles to build a serene rural landscape.

You're given a stack of procedurally generated hexagonal tiles, each with one or a few different kinds of landscape on them - maybe a load of houses that could form a village or town, a bit of forest bordered by fields, or section of lake. Plopping these down joins them together to form your growing valley. But to get a high score you have to pay attention. Fulfilling quests - like the windmill wanting to be bordered entirely by fields, or a forest being large enough to accommodate deer - will give you more tiles to keep expanding, and if you can grow large enough then you'll find yourself in new biomes, or pre-placed locations that give you long term tasks. It's the right level of chilled out while still requiring some active thought.

13. The Looker

It's not often (read: it has never happened before) that a list contains both a game, and a parody of that game. But here we are. The Looker is a 2022 game that functions both as a very good bit of good-spirited fun-pokery at JoBlow's The Witness, and as a good puzzle game itself. The essential vibe of many areas of the island in The Witness are recreated, with a giant chess set, hedge mazes and a weird castle, but there's also an arcade dungeon and kind of piratical lookout. Scattered around these are a selection of puzzle boards, solved by drawing lines from a START to an END in a red pen.

What constitutes a start or an end can be flexible. The letters S and E both count, and in one puzzle there's no end, and you have to listen as the narrator beeps while you draw your line around a maze - literally, he says "beep". The puzzles are all logical within the established rules, but require thinking outside the box, and are playful to boot. And throughout you'll see little references to The Witness, like a framed picture resembling one of the tree puzzles. The laser beam boxes take an absurdly long time to power up, with so many steps involved. You can find little recording boxes around the place, and one of them is an advert for used cars. This game is free!

12. Baba Is You

Baba Is You isn't exactly a sokoban game. You're pushing stuff around to get to touch an object designated as the winning object, sure, and that pushing is subject to sokoban constraints, so if you push something into a corner it'll be stuck there. But in Baba Is You, you can change what the winning object is. Or, indeed, what the you is. Each level will also have word blocks that form statements: Baba is You, Flag is Win. But you can also push those word blocks around to make Flag is You, so instead you're controlling the little flag sprite. Maybe you can make Baba be You and Win at the same time, creating an instant shortcut for the whole level.

You can make it so you can walk through walls, you can change which items are hazardous, you can make Baba float, you can change the colour of objects. But every level has a solution, and training yourself to think the right way is tough. Luckily the game has llovely, simple, almost childish 2D drawings to represent everything, so it's very clear what everything is. Until you start moving it all around, that is.

11. Botany Manor

In Botany Manor you play a retired Victorian botanist, Arabella Greene, who has been tasked with filling a book with rare and unusual plants, and the specific environmental factors needed to make them bloom. To do this, you have to find the seeds around her large and beautiful manor, and recreate said factors. And to do that you need to gather clues - letters, train tickets, charts showing the amount of sugar produced by juicing specific varietals of apple, times of year that different moth species are out and about. Combining the right information will allow you to, for example, put the right amount of sugar in the soil for an ethereal cluster of white, snow drop-esque flowers to grow, or know the right combination of coloured light to shine to recreate sunset to see another plant spring into life before your eyes.

The setting of the manor is beautiful and quiet, but sunny, and there are no voices - Arabella doesn't talk to herself as she works - so it's an incredibly peaceful game, without being at all easy. The puzzles are surprising and delightful, and a bit magical, but grow in complexity. It's possible to spend five minutes searching the ground floor for a hint of the year that the manor was built, after a hint gleaned from a pious poem, and when you find it you feel proper smart. It's a fantastic puzzle game.

10. Return To Monkey Island

What's old is new again, and Return To Monkey Island gives Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman another spin around the most famous piratical adventure series that video games has ever produced. Set in an unknown period after the events of The Curse Of Monkey Island, Return To Monkey Island recounts Guybrush Threepwood (a mighty pirate) and actually find the secret of Monkey Island, which he tried to do in the first game but was distracted by falling in love with Elaine Marley, and fighting zombie pirate LeChuck over who most wanted to marry her.

Most importantly, this is a robust and interesting point and click puzzle game that uses fun cartoony logic in it's myriad puzzles (and there are two difficulty settings, too). As a beloved video game series, Return has locations, characters and even jokes from the old games, but adds a new spin. It's meta (but not in an annoying way) about Guybrush's status as a famous adventurer, because ultimately things are changing and maybe he doesn't mean as much any more, but it's not alienating if you've never played these games. There's a lot that's new , too, and the quality of life changes, which include getting rid of the nine-verb menu and an extremely reactive hint system, make this a fantastic game for old fans, but also to onboard players who're a bit leery of point and click adventures in general.

9. Opus Magnum

This is probably one of those puzzle games that secretly teaches you principles of computer coding, isn't it? In Opus Magnum you build automated machines whose repetetive movements will construct potions and poisons and what have you weirdnesses for you, an alchemist. There are programmable arms, tracks, pistons, and all manner of weird machines that you have to give meticulous instructions to. You can make arms pivot, pistons retract, control the exact amount they pivot when... It's overwhelming to start with, as you also have to take into account the timing, and how each of these elements move in concert with each other.

When you're faced with the challenged of putting two of a particular reagent together, in time for a third to be transformed and slotted on a rail so that they all come together, just as an arm is read to pick them up and drop them into the finished slot - and program it so the process can repeat without any of the mechanised bits lagging behind - you quickly see whether or not you're cut out for Opus Magnum. And that's a fairly simple puzzle. But there's a lot of open-ended flexibility here. If your machine works, it works. You can concentrate on making a beautiful, elegant machine with no parts wasted, but it still counts if you bodge together an awkward monstrosity. There's Steam Workshop integration, too, so you can struggle against challenges set from all over the world

8. The Talos Principle

The Talos Principle blends the old, as you explore the ancient ruins of different civilisations, and the new. The hazards on your puzzling progress being high tech forcefields, floating robotic explosives, and automatic mounted gatling guns. These you can stall using Jammers on tripods, so much of your puzzling is getting your timing right and figuring out the logic of what will happen if you drop a certian barrier at a certain time. Later on you use light splitting crystals, which you can use to charge up doors in complex trails around the ruins, and weighted cubes on pressure pads The aim is to collect what are, basically, tetronimoes that allow you to open the doors to the next area.

They're good puzzles, but a large part of the reason that people remember The Talos Principle is the story around that - which I won't spoil, but has to do with free will and personhood (as a lot of puzzle games do, for some reason). You're solving these puzzles because you were told to by a voice which calls itself Elohim, and announces that it's your creator. This voice gets, honestly, kind of sinister, and you can find different clues telling you to defy or obey Elohim as you play. Whether you do or not is up to you - The Talos Principle has more than one ending - but the story isn't over either way, it seems, because Croteam say they're still working on a sequel.

7. Ctrl Alt Ego

Ctrl Alt Ego also appears on our best hacking games list, because it's both - although, if we're being honest, it's more straightforwardly a puzzle game than a hacking game. Actually, being super honest, it's not really a straightforward puzzle game. You're a sort of disembodied AI presence, able to flit hack into a flit between different machines. This includes, for example, cameras on data banks, allowing you to scope things out, but also little robits to trundle around, or even littler ones that can sneak into tunnels and have a 'bark like a dog' function.

The aim is, broadly, getting from one end of the 3D level to the next, but there are obstacles a-plenty in your way. Apart from physical obastacles like boxes and barriers, there are enemy robots who can tell if your droids are going where they shouldn't be, and daddy units that can dissolve matter. But fear not, because you can hack into them to dissolve and reposition things. Lateral thinking is encouraged and, indeed, essential, and if you die it's fine, cos you just go back to being disembodied and can have another go at it.

6. World Of Goo

This was our Game Of The Year in 2008, and it's still ruddy bloody good, as confirmed by Ollie when he revisited it in 2022 . In fact "World Of Goo still offers more fun than nearly any puzzle game since" was the lofty praise he gave it, so it's surely worth a punt. In simple terms World Of Good is a physics-based bridge builder, crossed with Lemmings. You have to get your goo balls to the exit in the level, and you do that by building structures out of the goo themselves, building bridges, towers and pendulums out of their sticky, stretchy, non-Newtonian bodies.

The goo isn't (aren't?) that struturally sound, though, and are given to buckle under their own weight. Luckily there are different subspecies of goo, like pink ones that can float like helium and give you some lift, flammable goo, or green velcro goo so you can sort of rebuild structures mid-level. World Of Goo is both chaotic and elegant, and is still a marvellous achievement this many years later.

5. Unavowed

So you got possessed by a demon who murdered a bunch of people over the year they spent in your body. Mondays, am I right? But, freshly de-demoned, you join a group of supernatural cops who solve supernatural crimes in lush, detailed pixelart, and with a cast of amazing voice actors bringing it all to life. An escaped muse is going overboard on the inspiration thing, a baby has been kidnapped by faries - you know, magic cop stuff. These events all tie together in a story of rising darkness and so on, but though that's all good, the really impressive thing about Unavowed is how layered and complex the game is.

You can pick one of three origins (cop, actor or barkeep) which affects the characters you already know in the game, and how you approach problems. Your fellow Unavowed agents are also a varied bunch, including a medium accompanied by a ghost, and a fire mage. You pick two of them to accompany you on each level, and this, to affects what happens and how. Having the medium along means you can see and talk to any ghosts around the place; the fire mage... you know. An ex-cop can shoot a window out where someone else might break it. There are layers and layers of cleverness and complexity to peel back.

4. The Witness

The island of The Witness is very big, with a castle, an orchard, a severe-looking dock, a swamp, a lab, blossom trees, a desert bit, a forest, a mountain, a sort of treehouse - just, loads of weird bits. And each of these bits are full of puzzles - each area having a slightly different flavour of puzzle, though they're basically all getting a line from one side of a little input board to the other - teaching you the rules of how to solve things in The Witness. The orchard has puzzles that mirror the apple trees in front of you. Some maze puzzles need you to look at the shapes of shadows. The swamp has tetronimo shapes on it's puzzle boards, and the treehouse has white and dark stars. I didn't get on with either of those at all. Or the puzzles in the forest where you have to listen out for the tone of birdsong, those can, candidly, go absolutely to hell.

But many of the other puzzle types made complete sense to me. And you might hate the ones that I understood straight away. What makes The Witness so impressive is what makes it hard to describe: it's sort of every kind of puzzle game at once. And, on top of that, you're walking around a weird island, listening to cryptic voice notes and wondering who put all these machines there in the first place. Eventually, if you play it long enough, you can see there are puzzles all around you...

It was one of the best games full stop when it came out, and it still is. Portal is genuinely fantastic, with actual, very good environmental storytelling, one of the best antagonists ever immortalised in pixel form, and - yes - brilliant puzzles. You play a (in classive Valve style) voiceless and almost-nameless protagonist who wakes up in a testing facility, having, at some point, volunteered to be a test subject for Aperture Science and, at some point, going into cryo-sleep. Now, an undisclosed length of time in the future, you're woken by a suspiciously cheery AI and thrown into a series of testing chambers to complete physics based puzzles with a gun that fires portals.

The now-legendary GLaDOS grows more personal as she tests you, progressing through the levels between passive aggressive and homicidal with alarming rapidity. The testing facility is suspiciously empty, and eventually you start to see what's behind the pristine white walls. But the way Portal teaches you the rules of the game, how its physics and portals work, and the puzzles it presents you with, all have you thinking in an entirely different way by the end of the game. It's a classic for a reason.

2. Outer Wilds

Outer Wilds is a unique puzzle game meets ramshackle space exploration. You wake up as the newest member of the Outer Wilds cosmonaut team, about to take your first solo flight (in a spaceship made of bins) away from your tiny home planet. It genuinely is tiny, too - it'd take you about four minutes to walk around it, but that's a precious amount of time to take, given that the sun in the centre of your tiny solar system goes supernova 22 minutes after you open your eyes.

Thank god that a magic statue in your town's museum gets you stuck in a timeloop, resetting the moment you die to start the day all over again. Using this ability, you can zoom around the different planets orbiting the sun and explore them - to within the limits of your oxygen meter, which is refilled either by trees or by returning to your ship. There's a lot to see, which is where the repeating loops come in. There are twins, one spilling sand into the other like an hourglass, revealing ruins on the first as the structures on the second are filled up. One is a puzzle planet. One is an exploded shell turned into a weird poket universe inside a multidimensional bramble. You can follow the sound of instruments to fellow scattered cosmonauts. The solution to Outer Wilds' puzzle is the universe.

1. Return Of The Obra Dinn

I think Return Of The Obra Dinn is this site's current favourite game - it is, after all, at the top of our top 100. It's hard to imagine what could unseat it from the number one spot on best puzzles, either. Return Of The Obra Dinn is a large game of what Eurogamer's Christian Donlan called "nautical murder sudoku" in his review . The titular Obra Dinn is a tall ship that went missing, and now it has reappeared with every living soul on board having died. Your job is a kind of magical insurance auditer armed with a Bernard's watch activated by death, which will show you the still-life moment of a person's death. You can walk freely around the scene, and daisy chain another death into more dioramas, all in a glorious monochromatic style mimicing much earlier games.

The challenge is to match up each body with the ship's manifest and a cause of death. This body belongs to the captain, who was shot by y, that sort of thing. Your choices are only revealed as correct once you've got three compleletely right at once. It's masterfully done, the more so because, as things progress, you notice some decidedly suspicious death options, including crushing and dismemberment... There's a point in Return Of The Obra Din where you open the cabin door, walk onto the deck, and realise the game has shifted gear. Encountering these deaths out of order, you eventually managed to put the whole story together, and it's one accompanied by screams, rending wood, and an absolutely banging soundtrack full of bells.

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13 (Secretly) Educational Video Games That Kids Will Actually Like

Yes, it's possible for video games to be fun and educational.

• She received the Renau Writing Scholarship in 2016 from the University of Louisville's communication department.

Games are a great way to keep kids entertained. It's an added bonus if they're educational. 

Video games have come a long way from the Super Mario Bros. games of the '80s and '90s -- and I'm not just talking about graphics. Developers have gotten super creative at sneaking in educational lessons where kids would least expect them. And one of the best ways to learn is when you're having fun .

In addition, an ongoing study published in the medical journal JAMA Network Open says that kids who play video games daily show improved cognitive skills in comparison with kids who don't play at all. 

Check out our list of mobile apps, PC and video games that can educate and entertain your kids.

What your kids will learn: creativity, problem-solving, collaboration, reading, math and more

Minecraft is available on multiple platforms.

World-building game Minecraft lets players explore, gather resources, craft tools and engage in some mild combat. The game has different modes -- survival, creative, adventure, spectator and multiplayer -- so players have flexibility in how they approach it. 

Creative freedom and self-direction isn't all that the game lends its players, according to iD Tech . Minecraft teaches teamwork and the motivation to improve reading and math skills. To get better at the game, parents told iD Tech that their kids started reading about biomes and calculating rations for adventures, dividing supplies and how many minutes until "night" in the game. Minecraft's educational benefits have also been packaged for the classroom . 

You can play the game on PC, mobile, console, Amazon Fire and Oculus. 

The Oregon Trail

What your kids will learn: historical events, critical thinking, problem-solving skills and more

Are you tough enough to survive blizzards, disease and snake bites in the retro "Oregon Trail" game?

The Oregon Trail came onto the scene in the '70s and has gone through quite a few changes since then. My 10-year-old self spent many an afternoon trying to get my digital wagon 2,000 miles west to safety. Before you start the trip, you pick a job (each has its own unique benefits), name your companions and purchase supplies. 

Recent updates to the game let you trade, upgrade your wagon and buy food and medicine to increase your group's chances of survival. Along the trip, your group encounters illness, obstructive rivers, highway bandits, food constraints and other complications of the time. Though the situations are a bit dramatic, players learn fast about pre-planning and making choices with the long term in mind.

I played (and described above) the 5th edition of the game, which you can order on Amazon. If you want a newer mobile experience, you can try The Oregon Trail: American Settler for iOS or The Oregon Trail from Gameloft on Apple Arcade .

What your kids will learn:  vocabulary

Wordscapes is a fun brainteaser game

Fans of Words with Friends and Scrabble (the app or the board game) may be drawn to Wordscapes, which allows kids to learn new words and practice logic skills. You get unlimited tries to solve crossword-style puzzles using only a handful of letters (with few free hints). The app challenges you on some levels by prohibiting three-letter words and offering daily puzzles that challenge you to guess all the words in a certain order. Wordscapes has a built-in dictionary that makes it easy for kids to add to their vocabularies. You can play on Android and iOS . 

The Little Big Planet series

What your kids will learn: logic, spatial orientation skills, design and problem solving

The Little Big Planet series.

This spunky little game follows the adventures of Sackboy and his friends. The first two games are mostly platform-jumping and avoiding obstacles to make it to the next level. Players can also create their own levels, customize characters or build complex contraptions in a level. Finally, players have the option to share their creations in the PlayStation Network.

The first game, Little Big Planet, was released in 2008  and the creators have released several entries since. Little Big Planet 3 is the newest installment , which introduced three new characters: Toggle, Swoop and Oddsock. The games are available on PSP, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 3. You can also check out Little Big Planet Karting and the free Run Sackboy! Run app on Android and iOS .

Portal series

What your kids will learn:  logic, problem-solving, physics, math, science and spatial skills

Even though this mind-bending puzzle game has been out since 2012, it still feels fresh and inventive. 

Portal is along the lines of Little Big Planet, but it's a bit more mature. The first Portal got a Teen rating for the inclusion of some bloodstains, but Portal 2 is rated E. The games might be a bit scary or difficult for players under 9 , Common Sense Media suggests.

Portal places players in a secret research facility who is led through a series of dangerous tests by a humorously narcissistic AI called GLaDOS. The puzzles are solved by creating an entry portal in a wall, creating an exit portal somewhere else and walking through. Players advance by learning how to manipulate physics and spatial constraints. Just try not to fall forever. Portal and Portal 2 are available on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. 

Kerbal Space Program

What your kids will learn : physics, the solar system, mathematics and basic aerospace engineering

Kerbal Space Program is a lot more than just cute aliens. 

Your kids don't have to play in a cardboard box in the yard if they want to be an astronaut. This rocket simulation game focuses on a space program for an alien race called the Kerbals. When you start a game, you'll be tasked with building a rocket that either works or doesn't work, based on " realistic aerodynamic and orbital physics ." Once you get your Kerbals into space, you can explore the solar system, build bases and construct space stations. The game got a lot of attention from NASA and the B612 Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to planetary science and planetary defense. 

The game has three modes -- Science, Career and Sandbox. Science mode lets players unlock new tech and advance the Kerbals; Career mode has players oversee every aspect of the Kerbal's space program; and Sandbox mode is more freeform play. Kerbal Space Program and its expansions -- Breaking Ground and Making History -- are available for PC and console.

What your kids will learn: trigonometry in its basest form, angles and critical thinking

Eloh is such an addicting, yet satisfying game.

This app is another example of teaching your kids without them knowing they're being taught. Eloh is a visually beautiful musical puzzle game that teases your brain without stressing you out. Each level features island spirits that you can move. Once you get them into the right spot, tap the red speaker and music will start. The goal is to bounce the "sound waves" off the spirits and hit the spiral icon. It's kind of like banking a shot in billiards. 

The levels get progressively more challenging, but there's no timer, ads or in-app purchases. The app costs $3 to download on Android or iOS . 

What your kids will learn: logic, patterns, data analysis and problem-solving skills

Zoombinis was a game I frequently played after school growing up.

If you grew up in the '90s, you might remember this game. Zoombinis kept me busy many an afternoon. In the game, you must guide the little blue critters out of the evil Bloats' clutches and home to Zoombiniville. Each of the 12 levels such as Allergic Cliffs, Stone Cold Caves and Pizza Pass get progressively more challenging, with kids using logic and pattern identification to win. Play on iOS , Android or PC. 

Where on Google Earth is Carmen Sandiego?

What your kids will learn: geography, the locations of historic events and other geographical facts.

Carmen Sandiego is globe-trotting on Google Maps. 

Google Earth and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's Carmen Sandiego games -- The Crown Jewels Caper , The Tutankhamun's Mask Caper and The Keys to the Kremlin -- offer something new while paying homage to the original franchise. Players use the magnifying glass to interview witnesses in different cities and gather clues, learning about geography and history along the way. When you think you've figured out the next step, click the airplane icon to fly to the next city and continue unraveling the mystery. You can play on web browser , Android or iOS . 

Nancy Drew Interactive Mysteries

What your kids will learn:  historical events and important figures, critical thinking, foreign cultures, languages and customs, problem-solving skills and more

The Nancy Drew interactive mystery series is probably my favorite game franchise of all time. 

I will shamelessly say that I have played these games since they started making them in 1998 . Some are based on Nancy Drew books (The Secret of the Old Clock game, for instance, is based on the first four books in the series) while others are original mysteries. 

The point-and-click games let you play as Nancy, solving a mystery as the amateur detective would. Whether you play as a junior or senior detective, you'll question suspects, solve puzzles, discover clues and find your way out of multiple sticky situations to catch the culprit. 

The beauty of these games is that they teach kids without them knowing it. At 9 years old, I knew a ridiculous amount about the Mayan civilization after playing Secret of the Scarlet Hand, as well as the key players in the French Revolution after playing Treasure in the Royal Tower. There are 33 games to date for PC, mobile and certain gaming consoles.

Democracy series

What your kids will learn:  multiple layers of government functions like parties, funding, taxes, elections, policy changes, political capital, budgets, debts and more. In addition, they'll learn about compromise, cause and effect, strategy and conflict resolution.

Can you run a country? 

Has your kid ever wanted to be in politics? Now they can try their hand at it with the Democracy game series. In this government simulation game, you play as the president or prime minister of a democratic government and alter policies in the areas of tax, economy, welfare, foreign policy, transport, law and order and public services. The catch, like in real life, is that each policy affects other factors like voter happiness, crime rates and air quality, for example. Players also have to deal with situations like homelessness or protests and make decisions accordingly. 

You can play Democracy, Democracy 2, Democracy 3 and Democracy 4 on PC.

National Geographic Challenge

What your kids will learn: historical figures and events, geography and more

Trivia fans, anyone?

The National Geographic Challenge is a quiz game that lives up to the "challenge" part of its name. There's no shortage of questions that range from easy to hard and are divided into regions -- North America, Europe, Asia, South America, Africa and Australia. Start a game for up to four players and choose an avatar. You can try to answer 40, 60 or 80 of the game's timed questions. The games are complemented by impressive photography and video from the National Geographic archive.

The National Geographic Challenge will test kids' knowledge with questions like: In what year did Madagascar gain independence from France? In which country does the River Niger reach the sea? The game is available on Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 3. 

World Rescue

What your kids will learn: geography, conservation and sustainability, global problems, healthy living and activism

World Rescue is one of the games offered by the institute. 

World Rescue was developed by ZU Digital with the help of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Think of it as a 21st century Captain Planet, minus the superpowers. The game's levels are set in Kenya, Norway, Brazil, India and China. There, you'll help five heroes solve problems like displacement, disease, deforestation, drought and pollution, giving kids lessons on real-world issues. You can play World Rescue on Android or iOS . 

For more, check out our list of the best video games to play in 2021 ,  best online games to play with friends  and  seven great kid-friendly gifts that aren't video games .

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29 Best Nintendo Switch Puzzle Games To Exercise The Brain

Put on your thinking caps!

#29 Mario vs Donkey Kong

#28 super mario rpg, #27 hogwarts legacy, #26 pikmin 4, #25 unpacking, #24 far changing tides, #23 the gardens between, #22 the room series, #21 gorogoa, #20 bridge constructor portal, #19 unravel two, #18 the trine series, #17 baba is you, #16 the talos principle, #15 snipperclips: cut it out, together, #14 relicta, #12 little nightmares 2, #11 captain toad: treasure tracker, #10 12 minutes, #8 world of goo, #7 return of the obra dinn, #6 keep talking and nobody explodes, #5 the sexy brutale, #4 portal series, #3 puyo puyo tetris, #2 thimbleweed park, #1 tetris 99.

If you’ve been enjoying the Nintendo Switch, you’ll know that there are all sorts of genres for you to play on the system in great number. And if you like puzzles? Yeah, they got hat in droves as these games will show you.

Platform: Switch Release Date: February 16, 2024

If you never got the chance to play  Mario vs Donkey Kong  on the Nintendo DS, you’re in luck, as the game has been remade for the Nintendo Switch!

The game will put you in over 100 levels filled with challenges, all so you can get back the Mini-Mario toys that Donkey Kong has stolen! But it won’t be as easy as simply finding all the toys. You’ll need to work your way through various challenges to reach them, and then, you’ll need to get them to safety! Sometimes, you’ll even need to guide whole scores of Mini-Marios to the exit!

With new levels and challenges, now is the perfect time to jump in!

Platform: November 17, 2023 Release Date: Switch

You might not think that  Super Mario RPG  is a “puzzle game,” and it’s not in the overall, but there are puzzles in the world to solve.

Not to mention, you have to worry about the “puzzles” that await you in combat! The game will maintain its classic turn-based combat but will also feature plenty of challenges within it that’ll test your timing and skill in figuring out how to exploit the enemies within!

So, while it may be an RPG, that doesn’t mean you can’t put your puzzle brain to the test by playing it! After all, it’s a remake of a classic title. What’s not to love?

Platform: PC PS5 XSX|S – February 10, 2023 | PS4 Xbox One – May 05, 2023 Release Date: Switch November 14, 2023

Steam | PlayStation | Xbox | Nintendo

Many people would say that the most important thing about being a witch or wizard is being able to use powerful spells and curses. But the wise ones among you will state that it’s about how you use those spells and whether you can use them to your advantage in multiple scenarios.

As you travel throughout the world of Hogwarts Legacy, you’ll have to face trials, not dangerous in nature but puzzling. So think like the educated student you are and use spells to move objects or erase obstacles from your path.

The more puzzles you solve, the further you’ll get to explore!

Platform: Switch Release Date: July 21, 2023

It’s easy to picture the Pikmin as just tools to use or beings to throw at foes to get them out of your way. But as  Pikmin 4  reminds you, you’ll need to use them and other entities wisely if you wish to get around the alien world you’ve crash landed upon.

At first, you’ll be restricted to certain areas, and you’ll need to use the Pikmin to open new paths, collect “treasures” to fix your ship, and fight off against familiar figures in Dandori battles to rescue your lost squad mates.

So don’t think of Pikmin as expendable. Instead, think of them as your most useful tool for getting out alive!

As the name suggests, this unique puzzle game tasks players with helping to unpack a person’s belongings after a move. Beginning in 1997, Unpacking follows the same person across several moves and many different years. From childhood to college to relationships, players will gain clues about the person’s life and experiences by looking at their belongings. Play casually to enjoy the story or search for all the hidden achievements for an added challenge.

A sequel of sorts to Far Lone Sails , Far Changing Tides puts you on a large boat, where a young man is trying to sail it in order to get to a new place for him to live in a world that has been nearly flooded.

The puzzles here lie in both the world around you, as you’ll need to activate certain things to open paths to get your boat through, as well as your ship itself. Dive deep into the vessel to figure out what it is all about, how to operate it correctly, and more.

It’s you and your ship against the world, and you’ll find that this adventure will take you to highs and lows while also giving you a unique atmospheric experience.

For a more lighthearted adventure, you might want to try out The Gardens Between . Because this single player title puts you in a story that focuses on “time, memory and friendship.”

You play as Arina and Frendt, two friends who fall into a “dream world”, and that world just so happens to be filled with relics from their time together as friends. Now, you’ll control the two friends and work together to solve puzzles to figure out more about their friendship, what they really mean to one another, and more.

It’s a very unique title that delves deep into its narrative, so you might just want to play it to see where the “bittersweet” story goes…and ends.

The Room Series is for those who like a deep approach to their puzzle titles while also twisting the perceptions of what those games can be. Because in the game, and the many that follow, you’ll be a person locked in a room, or dimensional space, and you’ll be left with nothing but puzzle boxes and clues as to what you need to do.

With each puzzle you solve, your “world” grows a little bigger, but then again, so does the mystery. You’ll learn about various sciences and dark practices and wonder how it’ll all going to end. More than likely…you won’t be able to guess…

With multiple games in the series, you’ll be able to try them on Switch and have plenty to do for a while.

There has long been an argument about whether “games are art”, and the answer is very obviously, “yes”. But if you want a game that very much proves that feeling, you need to look no further than Gorogoa .

Because in this game, you’ll be solving puzzles within a very special narrative, the twist is that these puzzles are tied to illustrations (thousands of them) that were made by a singular man: Jason Roberts. How you use these illustrations/art pieces will depend on the puzzle and what you’re trying to do.

The visual style here is truly unique, as is how you use it all gameplay-wise. So if you want a truly visual yet deep puzzle experience, here you go!

Combining elements from both the Portal universe and the Bridge Constructor series, Bridge Constructor Portal is an engineering puzzle game. As the name implies, players must construct bridges to transport trucks around Aperture Laboratories. Any bridge that withstands one truck passing over it will solve the challenge, but for a higher rating, all the trucks in the convoy must successfully cross. In addition, the cost of building each bridge is calculated, and players are challenged to keep their costs as low as possible.

After a shipwreck, two Yarnys (creatures whose bodies are made of wound-up yarn) connect their loose yarn ends. This binds the two together and creates a magical spark, which the players must chase. Using the yarn of their characters to climb, swing, and pull objects, players solve puzzles across the game’s island setting while uncovering a surprisingly dark story about children fleeing from abusive adults.

Set in a fantasy world, the Trine games focuses on a set of heroes who use an object known as the Trine in order to solve puzzles and fight evil. All so that they can save the kingdom they’re in.

The twist here is that unlike typical fantasy games, the combat and other elements are all tied to physics based puzzles. Each of the main characters for examples have skills that will affect things in a way that can solve puzzles or send objects at enemies to bust them up.

Because of the freedom and the skills of your characters, there are multiple ways to solve puzzles in the series. Plus, since there are 4 different games in the series, that’s a lot of puzzles to go and solve.

As an evil man once said, “True power is warping reality around you,” and that is a perfect lead-in to the title Baba Is You . Because in this game, every level you play you can change the rules of the game and the reality you play in.

That’s because the “rules” are displayed in blocks, if you change them, everything changes with it. And that means that anything and everything can happen depending on how you want to play things.

Plus, with 200+ levels for you to “bend the rules in”, that’s a lot of potential and possibility for chaos! In the fun way, of course.

So jump into Baba Is You and see just how you can change the world!

Sometimes the best puzzle games are the ones that make you ask the questions of all that is going on. In The Talos Principle , you are an entity in a world of ancient ruins…but also modern technology. The one who built you put you on a “mission” to solve over 120 puzzles scattered throughout the place.

But the question becomes…will you do it as your master wants? Or, will you try and solve the puzzles to learn more about yourself and then seek a way to escape?

The Talos Principle has a deep and twisting story that will ask a lot of big questions, all the while having you enjoy the puzzle-solving experience.

In this co-op puzzle game, players will snip and clip the paper bodies of their co-op partners to create different shapes to solve puzzles (for example, cutting a pointed shape to pop balloons). The game’s World mode allows one or two players, while the Blitz and Party modes allow up to four players. Party mode features puzzle challenges designed for more players. Blitz mode ups the ante with snipping deathmatches alongside games like basketball and hockey.

In this M-rated, first-person puzzle game, players will use magnetism and gravity to solve physics-based challenges. After being stranded on a moon base, a top-level physicist searches for her daughter while also confronting the truth behind her own research. Players can simply solve the puzzles or take their time exploring, fleshing out the story of this 22nd-century world and perhaps changing the destiny of humanity itself.

Arguably one of the best puzzle games ever made, Fez puts you in the role of Gomez, who is a 2D creature…that all of a sudden gets “revealed” the third dimension. Curious about what is going on, Gomez sets out on a journey to figure out the truth, leading to a large puzzle adventure you’ll enjoy.

Unlike many on this list, Fez doesn’t need “over the top” or even ‘super realistic” graphics to get things done. The visual style is simple for a reason, and it lends to the deep world that the game is trying to portray in its own way.

Trust me, the game is deeper than you realize, and so if you haven’t check this game out yet…you should.

There are some rather dark titles on this list as you’ve seen so far, and Little Nightmares 2 is another example of that.

In this sequel, you’ll play as Mono, who ends up in a nightmare world full of distortions and monsters. The reason for this is a signal tower, and it’s up to you and another named Six to reach the tower and figure out what is going on.

You’ll have to get the two characters to work together to not just solve puzzles, but fight off the various creatures that inhabit the dark and mysterious areas you’ll travel to.

This is definitely a title for those who prefer a very spooky element to their games. So try out Little Nightmares 2 is that fits your style.

It took us a while, but here indeed is a 1st-party puzzle game. Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker was first released on the Wii U, but ported to the Switch (like so many games before it…and after it…) so that more people could try it out. And you should absolutely do so.

You’ll play as…who else? Captain Toad! And in each level you’ll need to use all the camera angles and perspectives to figure out how to get from one spot to the next, get all the treasure, and avoid enemies and traps!

You can even play in co-op to have someone help you out with those enemies! It’s a lighthearted and simple title, but at times…isn’t that what we really need?

This top-down game boasts the voice talents of James McAvoy, Daisy Ridley, and Willem Dafoe. A husband and wife are celebrating the news that she is expecting their first child when a man claiming to be a cop arrives at the apartment. The man accuses the wife of murdering her father, and in the ensuing struggle, both the husband and wife are killed. The husband then wakes up moments before the man’s arrival. As the husband, players must use the time loop to save their wife and determine the truth about the death of the wife’s father.

It’s honestly hard to describe a game like Inside without diving deep into spoilers, so I’ll try and keep it light.

In this game, from the creative team of PlayDead, who made the equally dark and praised title Limbo , you’ll find yourself as a young boy who is drawn to a certain building where a “dark project” is being done.

What exactly is going on here? That’s for you to figure out in this narrative-driven puzzle title. You’ll have to make it through the confines of the building, solve puzzles, avoid detection, and learn the truth. But as these games like to show…sometimes it’s best if the truth…isn’t revealed at all.

Here’s another classic that was eventually brought over to the Switch. World of Goo puts you in control of living glob entities that you can both get and then place in order to build various things. Like what? Bridges, buildings, slingshots, and more. As long as you have the right structure, and amount of goo, you can make it.

Why do you need to do it? Because the game’s levels are all meant to do something specific, and you have to get your goo creatures to build the right kind of structure to complete the task.

It might sound simple, but it’s not. Each level is special, and can even have dangers for your goo creatures. So use them wisely, and get to the next challenge!

In 1803, the Obra Dinn set sail around the Cape of Good Hope with 60 people on board, but the ship never arrived at its destination. Five years later, it has mysteriously washed up at the port with all its passengers and crew either dead or missing. In this “1-bit” gorgeously-stylized, first-person game, players assume the role of an investigator and search the ship to try to determine what happened to the Obra Dinn . They are aided by the Memento Mortem, a device that lets them go back in time to witness a person’s final moments.

In this multiplayer puzzle game, communication is key. While one player (the Defuser) attempts to disarm a bomb, the others (the Experts) must read the instruction manual and convey the proper procedures for doing so. Neither party can see the other’s screen, so players are forced to rely on each other to disarm the bomb as a team. And if the bomb’s timer reaches zero, everyone explodes.

A party in a mansion has gone horribly wrong. All the party-goers are dead except for Lafcadio Boone, a preacher. Boone is stuck in a time loop, reliving the party over and over again, looking for a way to prevent the deaths of the party goers. In this single-player puzzle game, players must explore the mansion, gain new abilities, and decipher how to save the party guests. Along the way, they’ll uncover the truth about the guests, Boone, and the party itself.

…so, who wants some cake?

The Portal Series is indeed on Switch, and Switch players are lucky to have this title as it’s one of the most important puzzle franchises ever made.

In it, you are stuck in Aperture Labs, and an evil robotic entity known as GLaDOS is “guiding you” through the place in order to complete various tests. You won’t have a weapon in the game to help you though, all you have…is your portal gun.

The puzzles, creativity, and feel of this series is S-tier in every way, and that’s part of what makes it so great to play over and over again. And now that you can play it on the go…you have even more reason to try it out on Switch.

I’ll admit that I’m a little bias with this game because it’s something I found really fun even though I didn’t know what Puyo Puyo was.

Basically, this game is a fusion of two worlds of puzzle games complete with adorable and hilarious characters that interact with one another to try and save the universe! And naturally, you’ll save it by playing Puyo or Tetris against other characters and even against one another.

There’s a lot of depth in this game believe it or not, and that makes it all the more enjoyable to play not just the story modes, but all the other game modes.

There’s two games in the series on Switch, so don’t miss out!

Developed by Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick, this point-n-click puzzle game is a spiritual successor to Maniac Mansion and The Secret of Monkey Island . A pair of FBI agents arrive in the town of Thimbleweed Park to investigate a murder, but not all is as it seems in Thimbleweed Park. Using commands like “pick up” and “talk to,” players navigate the town while collecting evidence and interviewing suspects to uncover the truth behind the murder and the town itself.

There are a lot of reasons why I’m putting Tetris 99 on top despite it not being a “typical puzzle game”. But in point of fact, Tetris as a whole IS a puzzle game. You’re trying to fit the pieces together (like a puzzle) in order to get points and keep going.

In Tetris 99 , the difficulty is ramped up because you’re going to be facing off against 98 other players who are trying to not just beat you, but bury you in Tetris blocks.

So you’ll have to play fast AND play smart so you can trip them up before they do it to you, as well as get out of any sticky situations you find yourself in.

Do well enough, and you’ll be No.1!

About Todd Black

Best Puzzle Video Games to Level Up Problem Solving Skills

December 02, 2019

If you’re like me, it’s hard to turn off the problem-solving part of the brain and just relax. That’s why puzzle video games were invented! Here’s a list of the best puzzle video games to level up your problem solving skills. By best I mean my favorites. Many of the games on this list are not purely puzzle, but are also not necessarily action, as they require little to no dexterity with keyboard or controller. What distinguishes them from their genres is an emphasis on problem solving in the game play.

Criteria for Best Puzzle Video Game

Low barrier to entry (hand-eye coordination is not a prerequisite)

• This is my biggest criticism of many so-called puzzle platformers: the ‘solutions’ require a serious degree of dexterity

Sustained interest

• Most pure puzzle games don’t bring me back for repeated play

Compatible with Linux

• If it’s compatible with Linux it’s most likely cross-platform on Windows and Apple, too.

The 7th Guest

I remember playing the original The 7th Guest as a youth on my Windows box. It was one of the first games to ship on CD rather than floppy disk. The puzzles are hard, and back then the only way to get hints was to dial in on BBS, which was ridiculously slow, and even more expensive. It still holds up, considering it was released almost 30 years ago. It’s also fascinating as a timepiece to see how the developers cleverly negotiated the limits of the medium.

The 7th Guest on Steam | Wikipedia: The 7th Guest

This list can’t begin without a nod to Valve . Not only does Portal 2 require you to rethink the FPS genre, the cooperative play forces players to coordinate solutions to problems together . The first game in the series was brilliant, but it’s this collaborative aspect that makes Portal 2 genius.

Portal 2 on Steam | Official Site: Think With Portals

• See also: The TALOS Principle

Hidden Folks

Hidden Folks is my favorite game of all time. It’s less game and more puzzle book, in the spirit of Where’s Waldo? , the difference being that the tableaus are animated and interactive. Each scene requires you to find a set number of “hidden folks” or objects in order to progress to the next level. The “mouth sounds” are even more charming than the drawings.

Hidden Folks on Steam | Official Site

Stephen’s Sausage Roll

I love watching the expressions on the faces of friends and family when I describe Stephen’s Sausage Roll . The premise is ridiculous and even more addictive. Each puzzle is an island. home to a grill and one or more raw sausages. Your goal is to cook the sausage(s) evenly, on both sides and both ends, without burning. Whatever you do, don’t cheat. Savor it.

Stephen’s Sausage Roll on Steam | Official Site: Stephen’s Sausage Roll

Antichamber

Antichamber is a mind-bending “FPS” that subverts “the rules” of 3D CG space. I put FPS in scare quotes because the guns you acquire as a player are puzzles in themselves. Every problem is structured around its own logic, so, just when you think you’ve got it, you’ve got to think again. And again. And again…

Antichamber on Steam | Official Site: Antichamber

• See also: Parallax

Baba Is You

So you’re a sheep and you push blocks of text around maze-like landscapes to complete logical statements that alter the gameplay and/or the environment. Sounds simple and straightforward? The trick is to not fall into the trap of computational thinking. This isn’t Scratch , it’s dysfunctional programming.

Baba Is You on Steam | Official Site: Baba Is You

World of Goo

World of Goo is a surreal, physics-based “bridge builder”, in which you overcome gravity by building structures, such as bridges and towers, out of balls of goo to achieve various goals, level-by-level.

World of Goo on Steam | Official Site: World of Goo

• See also: Little Inferno, Human Resource Machine

The Bridge is influenced by M. C. Escher in both style and form. The graphics are hand-drawn in black & white and the puzzles are mathematically inspired impossible objects. The solutions to the problems are achieved by rotating the 2D “landscapes” to move objects via gravity and connect passages for your avatar.

The Bridge on Steam | Official Site: The Bridge

• See also: The Gardens Between

Pony Island

Any attempt to explain this game will ruin the magic. It’s $5. Just get it.

Pony Island on Steam | Official Site: Pony Island

The Swapper

The Swapper is the only true “platformer” on the list. While platformers are my least favorite genre of puzzle game, The Swapper takes it next-level with “cloning”. Problems are solved by creating copies of your avatar and strategically positioning them in the environments to trigger events. The atmosphere is beautiful and moody, composed of handcrafted assets and claymation.

The Swapper on Steam | Official Site: The Swapper

• See also: Fez, Limbo, Thomas Was Alone

What are your favorite puzzle video games for problem solving? Let me know @jarednielsen on Twitter

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Problem Solving Games, Activities & Exercises for Adults

By: Angela Robinson | Updated: February 13, 2024

Here is our list of the best problem solving games, activities and exercises for adults.

Problem solving games are activities that require players to use critical thinking skills to solve puzzles. Example activities include escape rooms, Sudoku, and murder mysteries. The purpose of these exercises is to sharpen reasoning and decision-making skills in group settings and to do team building with employees.

These activities are a subset of remote team games , found in problem solving books , and are similar to team puzzles , team building brain teasers and team riddles .

This article contains:

• team building problem solving activities for employees
• free problem solving games for adults
• virtual problem solving activities for students
• group problem solving activities
• problem solving team builders

Here we go!

List of problem solving games & activities

From word and number puzzles to role-playing games, here is a list of inexpensive and free problem solving team builders that help groups practice the art of critical thinking and compromise.

1. Espionage! (Team Favorite)

For an exciting game of social deduction, check out Espionage! This thrilling experience will put your team’s wits and instincts to the test.

Espionage! offers the following:

• a 90-minute session led by an experienced host
• undercover teams of agents and spies
• challenging puzzles, tasks, and maneuvers
• team conversations to help uncover secret identities

The best part is we will bring all the necessary game materials to your preferred location. If you are interested in boosting communication and critical-thinking skills within your team, then consider Espionage!

Learn more about Espionage!

2. Art Heist: The Vanishing of Van Gogh (Hosted)

You can turn your team into skilled detectives with Art Heist: The Vanishing of Van Gogh! In this captivating mystery, participants will locate the stolen artwork, The Bedroom .

Key features of this experience include:

• a 90-minute adventure led by a world-class host
• detailed puzzles, clues, and mysteries to unravel
• trails of evidence and hidden secrets
• group discussions to find the art

Additionally, you can include a cocktail kit to spice up your event. Through Art Heist, you will enhance your team’s ingenuity and problem-solving skills!

Learn more about Art Heist: The Vanishing of Van Gogh .

Get our free team building toolbox

• icebreaker games
• bingo cards

3. War of the Wizards (Popular)

With War of the Wizards, teams roleplay as minions of powerful wizards to vanquish forces of evil. Participants will play thrilling games and go on a quest to restore harmony to the realm!

War of the Wizards offers the following:

• a 90-minute journey guided by a distinguished host
• immersive storytelling that transports players into a magical realm
• engaging activities like world-building, role-playing games, and storytelling
• opportunities for forming alliances, facing challenges, and going on quests

Through the power of imagination and teamwork, your team can overcome tasks and participate in an epic fantasy battle. To improve communication and bonds, include War of the Wizards in your agenda!

Learn more about War of the Wizards .

Sudoku is one of the most popular free problem solving games for adults. The objective of this game is to fill each box of a 9×9 grid so that every row, column, and letter contains each number from one to nine. The puzzle makes a great team challenge. To play Sudoku on Zoom, screen share the game board. Then, turn on the annotation features. Using the add text functions, participants can fill in the numbers on the grid.

We made a starter puzzle you can use in your next meeting or virtual team bonding session:

Here are more online Sudoku puzzles .

5. Crossword puzzles

Crossword puzzles are word games that ask players to fill in words based on clues. Words interconnect, and players must think critically about the surrounding words to select the right phrase for the space.

You can use an online crossword puzzle maker to create a custom puzzle. Here are a few themes you may want to consider:

• teammates’ tastes and interests
• company knowledge and history
• industry terms and trends

Or, create a miscellaneous puzzle just for fun.

We made a sample puzzle you can use for your game:

To complete puzzles during online meetings, you can use the share screen function and add text through annotations.

Or, subscribers can play the New York Times’ daily crossword puzzle virtually . Dictionary.com also offers a free daily online crossword puzzle .

Check out more vocabulary games .

6. Online Escape Rooms

Escape rooms are timed games that get groups working together to solve puzzles. Traditionally, players enter a locked room and must complete all puzzles in an hour or two to unlock the door. However, groups can also play escape rooms online.

Digital escape rooms typically come in one of two forms: in a Zoom room and led by a host, or in a choose-your-own adventure format via Google Forms or websites. To play escape rooms virtually, enter a video meeting and follow the prompts, or screen share the Google Form and work out the puzzles together.

Check out our full list of online escape rooms .

7. Murder Mysteries

Murder Mysteries are story-based games that ask players to take on the roles of suspects or detectives while trying to identify a killer. These games often involve reading lines from a script, searching for clues, and occasionally solving puzzles to get hints.

These games make participants pay attention to conversations, analyze other characters’ behavior, and search for hidden meaning in the script. Players must use their powers of observation and logic to unravel the mystery.

Check out our list of Zoom murder mystery games .

8. Treasure Hunts

Treasure hunts are scavenger hunts with intention. While virtual scavenger hunts often ask players to collect random items, treasure hunts require participants to locate clues that lead to other prompts and hints. The game typically ends with players finding a treasure or solving a mystery, sometimes both.

The treasure hunt can have a specific theme such as secret agent missions or a hunt for pirate treasure, or you can run a more general hunt. Teammates can either compete simultaneously via Zoom call, or can play the hunt on an app individually and compete to beat each other’s scores.

Check out our list of treasure hunt apps .

9. Poem or story challenge

Most team building problem solving activities for employees revolve around science, math, and logic. Poem/story challenges rely on writing skills and are sure to appeal to the language lovers on your team.

Each player receives a limited word bank to use to create a story or poem. Then, players have a few minutes to craft their pieces. Afterward, everyone reads out or screen shares their creations.

Here are a few word challenge activities you can do remotely:

• Found poems or stories : Participants make poems or stories out of words they find by visiting websites, searching emails, glancing out the window, or taking a walk or drive around the neighborhood.
• Random word generators : Teammates use a random word generator to populate a word bank, and must use each word in the poem or story.
• Poetry magnets : Group members make poems using poetry magnets. You can send poetry magnet sets to employees and assemble the verses on a cookie pan during a Zoom call. Or, teammates can play with poetry magnets online .
• Page poems: Participants receive one page of a book or magazine, and must make a poem or story by blocking out other words so only the chosen text remains visible. This activity is part storytelling, part art, since story crafters can illustrate the pages as part of the design.
• Ransom note stories or poems : Players cut out letters from magazines and must form new words to make poems and stories. Or, players can receive a mix of random letters, form words, and run the text through a ransom note generator .

These activities are suitable for teams and individual players.

10. Moral challenge

Some problems are ethical rather than factual. Moral judgment plays just as important a role in the decision-making process as technical prowess. Players can flex their moral problem-solving skills by tackling ethical dilemmas or social puzzles.

Here are some social problem solving games online:

• Moral machine
• Scruples – the game of moral dilemmas
• Morality play

To play these games, either download the apps, or pull up the website and then screen share the prompts. These games are best played when discussed as a group, because the more belief systems and opinions, the harder an issue is to resolve. These exercises provide practice for real-life conflict resolution.

You can find similar challenges on our list of online personality tests .

11. Frostbite

Frostbite is a group game that hones team leaders’ communication skills while sharpening teammates’ listening and cooperation skills. The premise behind the game is that a group of explorers gets caught in a snowstorm and must build a shelter. Frostbite has paralyzed the leaders’ hands and snow-blinded the rest of the team. The leader must give the team instructions to build a tent that can resist arctic winds.

To play Frostbite, each teammate wears a blindfold. Then, the leader gives directions. Once the structures are complete, players turn on a fan to test whether tents can withstand the wind.

Frostbite is usually an in-person game, however you can also play virtually. In the remote version of the game, teammates construct tents out of cards and tape, while the leader surveys the scene on screen.

This exercise demonstrates the challenges of leading remotely, as teams need to operate with minimal oversight or supervisor observation. Therefore, instructions need to be clear and direct to be effective.

Check out more team building games .

12. Virtual Hackathons

Hackathons are events where participants have a set amount of time to design and pitch a new product or solution. This type of event originated in the programming world and is often used to create new apps, however you can apply the game to any industry or school subject.

Virtual hackathons are online versions of the event. Teams enter the competition, then work with each other via virtual meeting software or remote work communication platforms to design the solution. At the end of the competition, teams pitch ideas to a panel of judges and a winner is decided.

To run a virtual hackathon, first announce the theme of the event and collect sign-ups. So that no teams work ahead, hint at the general idea of the issue, and only explain the precise problem when the event begins. Then, give teams anywhere from a few hours to a few days to complete the project.

Discover more virtual hackathon ideas .

13. Improv games

Improv games are excellent problem solving activities. These exercises force participants to think and respond quickly to keep scenes moving in a logical and entertaining way.

Here are some good problem solving improv games:

Banned words : Performers cannot say certain words. Scene partners will conceive of situations that encourage the actors to use those words, and the actors must find alternatives, such as using synonyms or taking the scene in a new direction.

Scenes from a chat : Audience gives a suggestion for a scene, and players act the scene out. Though it’s a fictional and often ridiculous scenario, actors must react to the situation and solve the problem in order for the scene to end.

Miracle cure : Miracle cure is a quick-moving exercise that follows a simple format. One player declares, “I have a problem.” Another player responds, “I have a….[random object.]” The first player then replies, “great! I can use the [random object] to….” and describes how they will solve the problem.

Check out more problem-solving improv games .

14. Spaghetti Tower

The spaghetti tower is a classic team building game. Participants gather uncooked spaghetti and marshmallows, and must construct the tallest freestanding tower.

During the in-person version, players must construct one tall freestanding tower. However, for the virtual version of the game, players construct individual towers. You can send groups to breakout rooms for the build, then reconvene in the main room for judging. Teams are judged on three main factors: number of towers, height, and uniformity.

This version of the game not only tests the structural integrity of the tower, but also consistency and quality control. This exercise teaches teams to align and collaborate remotely, and produce a consistent product even when far apart.

15. What Would You Do?

What Would You Do? is a simple situational game that challenges participants to react to different circumstances. To play this game, read prompts one by one, and then ask participants to respond with gameplans. You can use the polling or raise hand feature to vote for the best option.

Here are some problem solving scenarios for adults or kids to use in the game:

• Zombies attack and you have to find a place to hide.
• You are at the zoo and the animals escape. Which one do you try to corral back into the pen first?
• After waiting in line for hours, someone cuts in front of you last minute. The person appears to be visually and hearing impaired, and doesn’t notice your protests. An official announces that due to diminishing supply, this individual will be the last in line to be served.
• You are eating a meal with important clients and/or your partner’s parents, and you want to impress. The individuals make you a dish that does not fit within your dietary restrictions, but you do not speak the same language and cannot explain why you do not want to eat.
• An imposter has infiltrated the organization, who looks, speaks, and behaves exactly like you. How do you convince your peers that you are the original?

For similar dilemmas, check out this list of Would You Rather? questions.

16. Desert Island Survival

Desert Island Survival is a game that challenges players to prioritize. The premise is that players have been stranded on an island, and must decide what order to perform survival steps.

Here are the possible actions:

• Set up shelter
• Explore the island
• Try to signal for help
• Make weapons for self-defense
• Build a raft to escape the island
• Start a fire
• Choose a group leader
• Search for other survivors

All group members must agree on the order of the steps. Players should explain the reasoning for the order of each step while ranking the actions.

Another version of the game involves players receiving a list of 15 to 20 items, and selecting five or so to bring to the island. You can also vary the location of the game, substituting remote islands for destinations like outer space or the distant past.

17. Choose Your Own Adventure

Choose Your Own Adventure stories enable readers to determine the outcome of the story by making decisions. Each action has a consequence that takes the tale in a different direction. Participants can try to guess how the story may unfold by talking through the different choices. When completing the activity in a group setting, the majority of the team must agree on an action before moving forward in the story.

There are a few ways to facilitate these activities online:

• Play an online role playing video game
• Watch an interactive movie like Black Mirror: Bandersnatch
• Read from a Choose Your Own Adventure book on Zoom
• Click through a Choose Your Own Adventure platform
• Create your own story using a Google Form

Whichever way you choose to do the exercise, you can use the screen share feature in your virtual meeting software so that listeners can more easily follow along.

18. MacGyver

MacGyver is a show where the hero escapes sticky situations by improvising tools out of unlikely materials. For example, in one episode the hero makes a telescope out of a newspaper, magnifying lens, and a watch crystal.

To play MacGyver, you can either list three to five objects participants can use, or challenge players to use items that are within arms reach.

Simply state a desired end result, such as “a way to open a locked door,” or “a getaway vehicle,” and then ask teams to explain what they will build and how they will build it. To make the activity more collaborative, you can give teams five or ten minutes in breakout rooms to strategize and design a prototype.

19. Dungeons & Dragons

Dungeons & Dragons is a roleplaying game where players pretend to be magical figures and creatures. One player serves as the dungeon master, who guides the game, while the other players pick characters and make decisions to move the story forward. Upon choosing a course of action, players roll a twenty-sided die to determine whether or not the plan succeeds. The game is story-based, the possibilities are nearly limitless, and truly creative problem solving options arise. Also, since gameplay is mostly verbal, Dungeons & Dragons is an easy activity to do over Zoom.

Here are the basic rules for Dungeons & Dragons .

20. Pandemic

Pandemic is a game that pits players against the forces of nature in a race to contain and control disease outbreaks. At the beginning of the game, each player receives a role such as containment specialist or operations expert. Participants must carry out the duties of their roles by choosing appropriate actions. Pandemic is a great game for groups because each team member has a clear part to play, and players must collaborate and work together instead of competing against each other.

To play the game online, you can use a Pandemic game app , or talk through the exercise while one attendee moves and displays pieces on the board.

Note: The subject of this game might hit too close to home for some players, considering recent history. You can find games with similar mechanics that deal with different subject matter, such as Forbidden Island.

Check out more team building board games .

21. Model UN

Model UN is one of the best virtual problem solving activities for students. This exercise casts participants in the role of international diplomats who must negotiate to solve realistic problems. Each player assumes the role of a country ambassador and must form alliances and propose solutions to solve crises.

Here are some sample Model UN scenarios:

• Human rights violation by powerful country
• Food shortage
• Disease epidemic
• Technology privacy violations
• Civil war branching into surrounding countries
• Natural disasters

Depending on the size of the group, participants either take on the part of an entire government of a country, or play a certain role within the government. To carry out the activity on Zoom, players can take turns giving speeches, message other countries privately via the chat, meet in breakout rooms to form alliances or have more intimate discussions, and use the polling feature to vote on propositions.

If politics does not resonate with your group, then you can alter the exercise by applying the same activity structure to a different theme, such as the Justice League, movie characters, business board members, or reality TV stars.

The main purpose of the exercise is to research, talk through problems, and compromise. As long as these elements are present, then the specifics of the setup do not matter.

There are many types of problem solving activities for adults. You can do online problem solving games, which require a different skill set than in-person problem solving. For instance, communication must be much clearer and more abundant when group members are far apart and unable to demonstrate or pick up physical cues.

Though many problem solving games include props and in-person elements, there are many games you can play together online. These exercises work well as educational tools as well as team bonding accelerators. Upon completion, participants are likely to feel a sense of accomplishment and increased confidence. These games are also great practice for real life conflict resolution, creative thinking and team building.

Next check out this list of connection games , this collection of crime-solving games , and this post with conflict resolution games .

We also have a list of the best decision making books and a list of team building problems for work .

Book wildly fun team building events with expert hosts

FAQ: Problem solving activities

Here are common answers to questions about group problem solving activities.

What are problem solving games?

Problem solving games are challenges that ask players to think critically and use logic to overcome issues or answer riddles. Examples include sudoku, murder mysteries, and spaghetti towers. These games are also known as “problem solving exercises”, “problem and solution games” and “group problem solving activities.”

What are the best problem solving games for groups?

The best problem solving games for groups include online escape rooms, moral challenges, and improv games.

What are some good problem solving team building activities for students?

Some good problem solving activities for students include crossword puzzles, choose your own adventure stories, and model UN.

How do you play problem solving games online?

The best way to play problem solving games online is to join a video call meeting to talk through the issue. Using the screen sharing and digital whiteboard features helps participants visualize the problem more clearly. Breakout rooms give teams the chance to discuss the issue more intimately.

Author: Angela Robinson

Marketing Coordinator at teambuilding.com. Team building content expert. Angela has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and worked as a community manager with Yelp to plan events for businesses.

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Best Puzzle Video Games: Top 5 Perplexing Plays, According To Experts

Puzzle games are a fun way to pass the time during long waits, flights, and other mass transit commutes. Playing these games is an addictive way to apply quick reflexes and problem-solving to rack up a high score. To narrow down the most enticing titles, we turned to our sources to discover the top five best puzzle games.

Between 1980 and 1985 there were many simple or logic-based puzzle games like the 1981 Atari title “Blockbuster” which was a digital representation of a Rubik’s Cube. All of this changed in 1985 with the release of what is considered to be the puzzle game GOAT, Tetris. This title was developed by Russian software engineer Alexey Pajitnov. The premise of this game is simple: arrange rapidly falling blocks so that they fill out rows across the bottom of the screen. Filling out a row makes all the blocks in that row disappear allowing players to stack more blocks that fall with ever-increasing speed.

Video games like these don’t always get the credit they deserve, as they require skill that not everyone can master. In fact, two in three Americans say it’s time for society to consider gaming a legit career. The revelation comes as 54 percent of 2,000 adults polled believe video gaming should also be taught in schools, and three in five think gaming should be part of the core school curriculum. Meanwhile, 53 percent noted that video games should be an academic extracurricular activity, like other sports.

Video gaming has come a long way and its public perception has evolved. Once considered a pastime for children and tech nerds, video games are now a major mainstream hobby. In fact, recent research indicates playing video games may actually boost a child’s brainpower, according to new research. Researchers in Vermont say gaming leads to better impulse control and working memory, improving behavior and academic performance. Lead author Dr. Bader Chaarani, a psychiatrist at the University of Vermont, describes the findings as “encouraging.”

So, now that you have an excuse to pick up a controller, be my guest. Gaming is even easier today with the popularity of smart phones. Having a powerful computer in their pocket allows puzzle video games and other titles to become fully ubiquitous anywhere that people find themselves waiting. From waiting for a table in a busy restaurant to the boarding area before a flight, puzzle games can be a great way to while away tedious or boring moments. Although Tetris may have been one of the greatest of all time, our list of the top five best puzzle video games shows how far the genre has come since 1985. Our list could even lead readers to discover a new favorite. Let us know your favorite puzzle games in the comments below!

The List: Best Puzzle Video Games, According to Experts

1. “world of goo” (2008).

Addictive gameplay that rewards creative problem solving are hallmarks of this beloved puzzler. “‘World of Goo’ has stood the test of time after its October 2008 release over a decade ago. Simple and addictive, ‘World of Goo’ has mastered the physics-based gameplay format, forcing players to guide lost, frantic little goo balls towards a pipe. The catch? They must use some of their given goo balls to build structures that the others can use to reach the pipe… Proceed with caution with this game. We heard that some of the tougher levels have the tendency to turn human brains into goo,” explains GameRant .

“The physics-based puzzler uses goo as the literal building blocks of each level. Tasked with helping characters across massive chasms, the player must construct structures made of goo that the characters can cross safely. The real challenge begins when the player is limited by how much goo they can use, and the difficulty means that the game never gets repetitive,” adds ScreenRant .

“But what elevates World of Goo from a good puzzler to a great game are the detail and flourishes that aren’t necessary to the puzzles, but are absolutely indispensable to creating the marvelous world in which they exist. The squealing, bug-eyed Goo Balls are endearingly cute, and the light-hearted , sometimes cryptic messages left by the Sign Painter are entertaining in their own right. There’s a story here too, believe it or not, and it actually gets a little dark, although it never entirely lets go of its inherent goofiness,” states PC Gamer .

2. “Portal” (2007, 2011)

One of the greatest puzzler series of all time, “Portal” challenges players to solve puzzles using the strange physics created by a portal gun. ‘“Portal 1 + 2’ are some of the most creative games ever made, period. These unique puzzle shooters blend physics and shooting in a way that made them infinitely popular with gamers… In both games, you’ll be put to the test to see if you can outsmart the mechanical Glados. But how you go about solving the puzzles will test your problem-solving and creativity to the max . So dive in, grab your portal gun, and get the job done,” writes Gameranx .

“No list of best puzzle games is complete without Valve’s ‘Portal’ Series and I can say that with complete confidence. Their brilliance cannot be simply ignored. Initially released as part of a five-game collection called ‘The Orange Box’, the original ‘Portal’ was more of an experiment with just few dialog and short gameplay. Nevertheless, it makes up for that in intensity and excitement . Keeping ‘Portal’s’ initial success in mind, Valve launched ‘Portal 2’ with superior mechanics and more elaborative gameplay. Both games are based on a simple premise in which players solve puzzles using portals,” adds Rank Red .

“Portal was a success—a huge one—for a number of reasons. The writing, the humor , and the story that unexpectedly began to drip through the cracks of Aperture Science while we played Valve’s 2007 first-person puzzler. Thing is, it would still be a great game without any of that because the puzzle-solving is so damn great on its own… The difficulty increases gradually, getting more complex at just the right pace, so we never feel frustrated and yet it never seems too easy. There’s even a puzzle-based boss fight, and a charming little song when you win. While ‘Portal 2’ upped the ante in just about every department, the original is still a wonderful, funny, and rewarding way to spend a few hours,” according to PC Gamer .

3. “Baba is You” (2019)

A programming puzzle game might not sound exciting, but it is one of the most addictive puzzlers on the market. ‘“Baba is You’ essentially takes the challenges of programming and remodels them into an accessible and ingenious puzzle game. Each puzzle in ‘Baba is You’ revolve around short strings of words that dictate the rules of that puzzle. ‘Baba is You’ for example, means that you control the character known as Baba, while ‘Rock is Push’ means that rocks can be pushed around by other things. But these words can themselves be pushed around and rearranged. Change ‘Baba Is You’ to Rock is You, for example, and suddenly you’ll assume control of the rock . The result is a puzzle game about breaking the rules, where you solve its conundrums by coming up with your own cheat codes. It’s enormously satisfying and so, so clever, packing an immense amount of puzzling fun into a tiny , simple-looking package,” offers Bit Gamer .

‘“Baba Is You’ is a tough game to describe, as it’s unlike anything else currently available. The basic premise is simple: Each puzzle has a series of rules, e.g., ‘baba is you,’ ‘wall is stop,’ and ‘flag is win.’ With those rules in place, it’s your job to solve the puzzle. In the case described, that would mean reaching the flag as the little rabbit known as Baba. Nothing is set in stone , however. You’re free to move blocks around and change the rules of the puzzle you’re solving. Although the setup seems simple, it quickly becomes mind-bending . Nothing in ‘Baba Is You’ holds any value, so a reasonable solution to a puzzle could be as simple as allowing you to move past a wall or as complex as becoming the wall itself,” writes Digital Trends .

“Rather than you always being at the mercy of a game’s rules, ‘Baba Is You’ lets you decide the rules of the universe for once. In fact, the whole challenge comes in the form of deciding how different aspects of the environment will interact with one another in order to proceed forward.  In a true retro game art style, this is a game that will run on most PCs and is also incredibly addicting to play. That being said, ‘Baba Is You’ is a puzzle game that’s more challenging than it looks and requires a lot of thinking outside the box, along with a dash of creativity,” writes The Gamer

4. “The Witness” (2016)

This game allows players to flex their problem-solving muscles as they solve puzzles to navigate a maze. “The island of ‘The Witness’ is very big … And each of these bits are full of puzzles – each area having a slightly different flavor of puzzle, though they’re basically all getting a line from one side of a little input board to the other – teaching you the rules of how to solve things in ‘The Witness’ … What makes ‘The Witness’ so impressive is what makes it hard to describe: it’s sort of every kind of puzzle game at once. And, on top of that, you’re walking around a weird island , listening to cryptic voice notes and wondering who put all these machines there in the first place. Eventually, if you play it long enough, you can see there are puzzles all around you,” raves Rock Paper Shotgun .

The Witness launches on PS4 January 26, 2016. An update from @Jonathan_Blow : http://t.co/gE79npNc8v pic.twitter.com/9ODUPeceOW — PlayStation (@PlayStation) September 18, 2015

“All the puzzles in the game are maze-like and can be solved by drawing a path connecting the start point to the goal or endpoint. You must follow certain rules while progressing, and these rules can change from puzzle-to-puzzle. While many of them can be solved quite easily, most are a hard nut to crack. An important component of the game is yellow boxes that carry a set of puzzles which must be solved in order to activate them and eventually conclude a region,” writes Rank Red.

“Exploring a resplendent open-world environment, the player is dropped into the game with very little instruction. Puzzles represent roadblocks, and the trick to solving the puzzles isn’t clearly defined by the game itself. This open-ended gameplay allows users to discover the game at their own pace, and solving puzzles is that much more rewarding,” offers ScreenRant .

5. “Catherine: Full Body” (2011)

“Catherine” is as much a visual novel as it is a puzzle game where players explore the possibilities and conclusions that are created by their own choices. “Vincent has a problem: he’s just drunkenly cheated on his longtime girlfriend. Now he’s having nightmares about climbing block towers that disintegrate underneath him (also, he’s a sheep in his boxers). Leave it to the team behind the ‘Persona’ series to come up with a puzzle horror game that crosses social interactions and commentary on relationships with a blood-soaked ‘QBert.’ There’s no other puzzle game quite like ‘Catherine,’ and despite its steep difficulty it’s definitely worth your while,” explains Complex .

“The game is divided into two segments spanning over day and night. During the daytime, your character can do certain things like chatting with his friends and ordering drinks. The puzzle element of the game takes place during night time, well it’s actually ‘nightmare times.’ Your objective is to climb giant staircases which are slowly collapsing, and safely reach the top. Remember it’s all happening in Vincent’s dream. In order to climb the staircase, you must quickly push and pull blocks while avoiding certain pitfalls,” details Rank Red .

“From Atlus, the creators of the ‘Persona’ series, ‘Catherine’ is a unique puzzle-dating sim hybrid . You play as Vincent Brooks, a 32-year-old systems engineer who’s been dodging marrying his longtime girlfriend, Katherine with a ‘K.’ One late night, Vincent encounters Catherine, who’s the antithesis of his controlling girlfriend. After a one-night stand, Vincent starts having terrifying dreams where he must outrun demons. Of course, these dreams mirror the double-life Vincent is leading in reality, as he’s joined by other men who’ve fallen to infidelity. The dream sequences are where ‘Catherine’ comes into its own, offering ruthlessly fast and mind-bending puzzles built on the simple premise of moving blocks ,” states Digital Trends .

You might also be interested in:

• Best PlayStation Games
• Best Xbox Games
• Best Nintendo Games
• Best Arcade Games
• Rock Paper Shotgun
• Digital Trends

Note: This article was not paid for nor sponsored. StudyFinds is not connected to nor partnered with any of the brands mentioned and receives no compensation for its recommendations.

20 Video Games To Play If You Love Solving Mysteries

Looking to solve a disappearance, murder, or something even more sinister? These mystery games let fans play detective.

• The video game mystery genre evolved from early text-based games, offering complex problem-solving experiences.
• Sought-after mystery games often intertwine with different genres such as adventure, action, and horror.
• Crime-solving video games like Disco Elysium and The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles offer unique narratives and immersive gameplay.

The mystery, police procedure, or detective genre of video games has an impressive library, and its evolution can be traced to the earliest "walking simulator" games that used only text commands. Players had to explore the area, gather clues, and collect certain important items. Puzzles, mystery solving, and collecting clues were part of the earliest games to exist, right after sports.

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Many of these kinds of games often use the same concepts of investigating, gathering clues, and the powers of deduction that are similar to the daily activities of a police officer or private investigator. Games that focus on solving mysteries can and often do overlap with other genres including adventure, action, role-playing, and even horror.

Updated April 13, 2024 by Kristy Ambrose: Video games about solving mysteries or crime dramas continue to be popular, so there are a lot of new options to choose from along with vintage titles that have been released or remastered for present-day audiences.

Complex problem-solving can be more rewarding than a big explosion or a dramatic boss fight, and the best mystery games can be role-playing, story-based, or adventure games. This library is so vast that it's easy to find a variety of games for any port or format, and that includes phones, tablets, and consoles, along with conventional desktops.

1 Disco Elysium

Metacritic score: 89, disco elysium.

This video game's art style, which mimics a surreal oil painting, is one of the features that sets Disco Elysium apart from other RPGs. It also features an unconventional progression system that includes skill checks and dialogue trees determined by Perception and pain threshold, which experienced RPGers might refer to as Fortitude.

The setting is a city in the aftermath of an apocalypse, and the main character is in the depths of amnesia, so there are a few more mysteries here other than the murder he's trying to solve. Even though he's missing most of his past, every main character still has a set of distinct character traits and a Thought Cabinet, which unlocks more backstory depending on the player's dialogue choices.

2 Her Story

Metacritic score: 86.

An interactive film that's also a video game, and one of the best modern examples of how the genre has evolved from the CD-ROM days. Her Story is independently developed and created by Sam Barlow, who formerly worked at Climax Studios, the same company that made Silent Hill : Origins and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories .

The story is structured around police procedure , using a mix of different kinds of evidence that the protagonist has to examine, sometimes using forensics. The game includes a lot of live-action footage that Barlow created after studying real police interrogation videos.

3 Outer Wilds

Metacritic score: 85, outer wilds.

An action-adventure mystery video game that uses deep space as the setting, Outer Wilds is more about exploration and problem-solving than fighting. The premise of the game is that the universe is stuck in a 22-minute time loop that ends in a supernova, which the main character will get caught in several times before they finish the game. Luckily they gain the ability to retain their memories beyond death during the first part of the story.

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The player spends most of the game learning about an ancient race called the Nomai and their ultimate project, planned on a galactic scale, which is the source of the time anomaly. No pressure, but the protagonist has to piece together the clues from various logic puzzles to discover what happened and find a way to save the entire universe.

4 The 7th Guest

Metacritic score: 68.

• Platform(s): macOS, DOS, CD-i, PC, Linux, Mobile
• Released: April 28, 1993
• Developer: Trilobyte
• Genre(s): Puzzle, Adventure

The 7th Guest is a point-and-click mystery video game classic originally from the CD-ROM era that was remastered and re-released as a 25th Anniversary Edition in 2019. It was one of the first "haunted mansion" games, and also one of the first to integrate video graphics into a computer game in a way that contributed to the plot rather than just being silly.

This was also at a time that horror games actually started to emerge as a genre, and The 7th Guest didn't shy away from the sordid or the mysterious. This game looks fun and colorful, and it is, with the graveyard cake puzzles and wacky characters. As the story unfolds into one of the best mystery games ever made, it becomes clear this isn't a game for kids.

5 Paradise Killer

Metacritic score: 81, paradise killer.

The more concise summary of this game is that it's a sci-fi adventure with a murder mystery as the focus of the plot. A more detailed description would include that the whole thing is set in a pocket universe called Paradise Island, which has been constructed by aliens to trap and house humans.

It's used to lull them into a false sense of security before sacrificing their souls to construct the next incarnation of the same island. That's a whole lot of lore for a game that's relatively small in comparison, and the detailed narrative of Paradise Killer is what makes it better than average when it comes to mystery-solving games.

A survival horror game that includes solving mysteries, Signalis is designed as a third-person shooter and has a two-dimensional perspective. It was critically acclaimed and players gave it high praise, recognizing that it was inspired by similar resource-collecting and puzzle games like Resident Evil .

The sci-fi setting features a spaceship and a mysterious government known as the Nation of Eusan, at war with an even larger galactic empire. The game features androids called Replikas, which the nation of Eusna uses as soldiers, miners, and other grunt work. A few different endings are possible, depending on the progression of the story, and the Artifact Ending is the secret one that requires the player to collect three hidden keys.

7 The Vanishing Of Ethan Carter

Metacritic score: 82, the vanishing of ethan carter.

The Vanishing Of Ethan Carte r relies on stunning artwork and a compelling story to draw in aspiring detectives. This is one of the best mystery video games that combines an open-world environment with little guidance for how the mechanics work, and learning is part of the game.

The player follows a mystery through an impressive collection of artistic settings and immersive locations. It's the atmospheric quality of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter that most people cite as what elevates it from other mystery-solving games.

8 Grim Fandango

Metacritic score: 94, grim fandango.

An adventure game first and foremost, because this is LucasArts after all, Grim Fandango is also about solving a mystery. On a technical level, this is one of the first times that a 3D-rendered video game looked good, using an unconventional animation style that mixed film noir with calaca-like characters. The main character is a travel agent, but one who dwells in the afterlife and helps transport souls.

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Despite the critical acclaim that Grim Fandango received and the fanbase that follows it today, it was a commercial failure in its time. The game was re-released in 2015 with improved graphics, a new orchestral soundtrack, and a director's commentary.

9 Sam And Max Hit The Road

Metacritic score: 91.

• Developer: LucasArts
• Genre: Graphic Adventure
• Platform(s): MS-DOS, Mac OS, Microsoft Windows
• Released: 1993

Sam and Max, also known as the Freelance Police, have a lot of wacky adventures solving crimes and this title is still one of their most popular. The plot is set in motion when a Sasquatch goes missing from a carnival. The intrepid heroes have to use their perception and deduction skills as they visit several popular American tourist attractions looking for clues.

Sam And Max Hit The Road is part of the impressive library that LucasArts amassed when point-and-click adventure games were all the rage. It's distinctive for its humor, clever dialogue, and the best voice talent for games at the time.

10 Pentiment

A narrative adventure that's mostly text, the 2D animation fits the medieval aesthetic perfectly. Pentiment is the best mystery game for players who are interested in solving a mystery along with those who appreciate a unique and beautiful art style, which is used seriously here as opposed to a cartoony joke like in some other games.

The main character is Andreas Maler, a journeyman artist who gets mixed up in the murderous drama of 16th-century Upper Bavaria. Players can build this character's skills and backstory through choices they make in the dialogue. Set in the fictional town of Talsing in the Alps, the timeline of the game spans 25 years, and solving these mysteries becomes a lifetime commitment.

11 The Wolf Among Us

Metacritic score: 80, the wolf among us.

Fans of mystery-based video games who also like comic-book adaptations would probably enjoy The Wolf Among Us . It's intended as a prequel to the Fables comic book series, which was created and written by Bill Willingham and has been running since 2002.

This is a graphic adventure game that mostly works on point-and-click mechanics as the player explores a variety of different settings and environments. The player controls the main character, Bigby Wolf, formerly known as the Big Bad Wolf and now the mayor of Fabletown, who is tasked with solving a series of murders. A sequel to the game is scheduled for launch in 2024.

12 Heavy Rain

Metacritic score: 87.

An interactive drama and adventure mystery video game, Heavy Rain received numerous accolades from both players and critics for the play style, story, and overall design. There are four different protagonists involved and the player gets to control all of them at different points, and any number of choices causes the storyline to branch off into another direction.

The story begins with a tragedy and goes downhill from there. It's dark, visceral, and sometimes bloody, so be advised it's not for the faint of heart. Follow the clues left by a serial killer to save the protagonist's son before it's too late. This is a game where the player's actions do matter , so choose wisely as the dark streets of Philadelphia start to close in.

13 Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments

Metacritic score: 73.

• Platform(s): PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One
• Released: September 30, 2014
• Developer(s): Frogwares
• Genre(s): Adventure

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's depiction of Sherlock Holmes was partly autobiographical. His use of forensics was new for its time, but the modern age has the same fascination with his skill for finding and interpreting clues. Many of the games in this series could also be likely candidates, but this game also includes moral choices that affect the gameplay.

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On a more technical level, this is the first game in Frogwares' Sherlock Holmes series that uses Unreal Engine 3 to create an intense and immersive first-person POV. The written portions are intended to resemble the novels, and each game includes a variety of cases to solve, from murders to thefts to disappearances.

14 L.A. Noire

Noted for some stunning artwork and a realistic storyline , L.A. Noire takes place in Los Angeles in 1947. The protagonist is Detective Cole Phelps, and the story follows his rise through the LAPD. When Phelps takes on a case involving morphine distribution and some of his old World War II buddies, the plot thickens.

Aside from the main plot that is focused on cracking the case, there's a lot to keep the player busy in the form of car chases, gunfights, and hand-to-hand combat. Motion-capture technology was used to capture realistic human expressions for the interrogation sequences.

15 Professor Layton And The Curious Village

• Developer: Level-5
• Genre: Puzzle, Adventure
• Platforms: Nintendo DS, mobile, iOS, Android
• Released: February 10, 2008 (North America)

Solving a mystery doesn't always have to be about sordid crimes and dark alleyways. For those looking for something more lighthearted that's also great for the kids, some of the best mystery games can be found in the Professor Layton franchise. It has a familiar format that includes finding clues and solving puzzles.

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There are a total of seven games in this series, and this is the first. Professor Hershel Layton and his apprentice, Luke Triton, are looking for an artifact called the Golden Apple in a quaint but enigmatic little hamlet called St. Mystere. It's not just for fun and profit either because the holder of this special item will inherit the vast fortune of a local monarch.

16 Until Dawn

Metacritic score: 79.

It's the "teenagers lost in the woods" trope that never seems to get old, and although it's primarily a horror game, the main characters in Until Dawn have to hunt for clues regarding the mystery of the dangerous mountain wilderness and stay alive while they do it.

Until Dawn is a narrative and exploration game with little or no combat that relies on scenes and quick time events to progress. The story is intended to mimic the same suspense and terror as a slasher movie, with every decision affecting the future lives of the group, and everyone can live or die depending on what choices are made.

17 What Remains Of Edith Finch

Metacritic score: 88, what remains of edith finch.

The genre is part of a category of adventure games called "narrative-focused walking simulators," and even though the term is new, the concept is not. Myst was a game like this, and What Remains of Edith Finch has also received critical praise for its artwork and story. The setting is a mansion on an island off the coast of the Pacific Northwest and the time frame is the 1930s, so be prepared for a lot of marine and seaside themes . Although it sounds realistic, even dull, the elements of magical realism in the design keep the game immersive and compelling.

The player is the titular character, Edith, a teenager who is the last surviving member of her family. She is visiting her ancestral home for the first time in years and putting together the clues to reveal what happened in the time that she was gone.

18 The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles

The great ace attorney chronicles.

A wildly successful franchise that gave the whole storybook design some clout, The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles is two of the games in the franchise neatly collected under one title. The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve and The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures both use the same courtroom drama and investigative structure as they collect clues and cross-examine witnesses to solve the mystery.

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The game takes place in the late Meiji Period of Japan, which lasted from 1868 to 1912, and the clothing, customs, and environment of the game reflect the overall aesthetic. That gives it a "period piece" charm that adds to the game's overall audience appeal.

19 Return Of The Obra Dinn

Return of the obra dinn.

The year is 1807, and the protagonist is an insurance agent for the East India Company. Their mission is to determine what happened to the passengers and crew of the Obra Dinn, with the aid of a mysterious pocket watch. The ship went missing off the coast of Good Hope, and after no sight or communication for some time, the ship drifted into port with nary a soul aboard.

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It's not exactly a rollercoaster ride, but for those players who like a story filled with suspense, mystery, and a touch of psychological horror, Return of the Obra Dinn is one of the best mystery games. It's based on investigation, information, and deduction, and Return of the Obra Dinn 's distinctive style has set it apart from other games in the independently-made category.

20 Hotel Dusk: Room 215

Metacritic score: 78.

• Developer(s): Cing
• Genre(s): Adventure, Mystery
• Platform: Nintendo DS
• Released: January 22, 2007

It's not a widely-known title because it's only available on one platform, the Nintendo DS , but Hotel Dusk: Room 215 is a highly-rated adventure mystery with design and artwork inspired by the film noir genre. Its success prompted a sequel, Last Window: The Secret of Cape West , which was released in 2010.

Kyle Hyde is the main character of the story, and keeping with the usual stereotype he's a cynical private eye with a five o'clock shadow and a chip on his shoulder. The protagonist has to solve puzzles along with searching for clues to solve, and each chapter of the game ends with an intense interrogation instead of a boss fight.

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The 10 best mystery games that'll make you feel like a true detective

This collection of the best mystery games and best detective games must be investigated

The best mystery games take you on a true adventure. Whether you're charged with solving a murder or putting a life back together, the best detective games ask you to put on your thinking cap and get to work analyzing the world around you. 

That's what you'll find here. Ten awesome games that'll have you chewing over clues, interrogating witnesses, and using your powers of deduction to help you through a case. Whether you're looking for a game that is narrative-focused or an experience full of puzzles – or maybe something between the both – you'll find something something to pique your interest here. So keep reading to find our ranking of the best mystery games you can play right now. 

10. The Wolf Among Us

Developer: Telltale Platform(s): PC, PS4, Xbox One

Telltale's signature formula of pairing deeply thoughtful stories to consequential decision-making is perfectly suited to the mystery genre, and The Wolf Among Us is ample proof of concept. Here you're tasked with a fairly singular goal: solving a captivating murder case in a fairytale version of New York City, meanwhile keeping fairytale characters and their hidden community a secret from the outside world.

A prequel set in the world of the Fables comics, The Wolf Among might surprise you with its grittiness. This very noir murder mystery kicks off with a decapitated prostitute setting into motion the events of the game. Decision-making and the resulting consequences can be agonizing, as often-times it's nigh impossible to determine the outcomes of your choices. But The Wolf Among us manages to surprise at every turn, making it a worthwhile adventure no matter where your decisions take you.

9. Paradise Killer

Developer: Kaizen Game Works Platform(s): Multi

Paradise Killer is a unique mystery game that's worth your time and attention. You're charged with trying to uncover the culprit behind a murder on Paradise Island, a pocket universe wherein a group of immortal beings – the Syndicate – are trying to create a perfect society. When the entire Syndicate Council is slaughtered, detective Lady Love Dies is brought out of exile to put an end to the carnage. 

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What's great about Paradise Killer is that nearly everyone within the game world has something to hide and could, therefore, be the killer. You can bring any character to trial at any time, but you'll probably want to spend a bit of time properly gathering evidence and following up on any info before dragging somebody in front of a jury. Paradise Killer is a must-play, if you can avoid the temptation to use Google for clues!

8. Heavy Rain

Developer: Quantic Dream Platform(s): PC, PS4, PS3

Heavy Rain is what solidified Quantic Dreams as a pioneer of the narrative-driven, interactive game experience. What would follow from the studio ranges from forgettable (Beyond: Two Souls) to genre-defining (Detroit: Become Human), but the since-remastered Heavy Rain remains a must-play for fans of dramatic storytelling and mystery-solving.

In Heavy Rain, the stakes couldn't be higher for protagonist Ethan Mars, who had just lost a son before having another taken from him by the mysterious "Origami Killer." With a fast-moving clock on his son's life, Ethan is forced to endure exhausting, increasingly horrific "tests" to prove his fatherly determination. Heavy Rain feels very real - one of my playthroughs resulted in an ending about as wretched as I've seen in a game. Needless to say, I've played through Heavy Rain more than a few times, and you likely will too.

7. L.A. Noire

Developer: Team Bondi Platform(s): PC, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch

When you think of mysteries and detective stories specifically, there's almost no better setting than L.A. Noire 's sepia-toned 1940s Los Angeles. A technical marvel for its time (2011), L.A. Noire still looks good today, but more importantly, it's also just as engrossing to investigate murders and climb the ranks of the L.A.P.D. Groundbreaking facial animations considered, L.A. Noire's greatest achievement is making you truly feel like an up-jumped cop in a moody film noir. 

The 2017 remaster on PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch features updated textures and a few convenience updates that make L.A. Noire an essential crime-drama mystery for aspiring detectives. Though, it's best to forget the precedent set by Rockstar's mainstay series, Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption. While it's technically an open-world game, L.A. Noire tells a laser-focused story without a lot of room for distraction. And believe me, that's a good thing, because you'll be too absorbed in rooting out the scum of L.A.'s underbelly to care about anything else.

6. Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments

Developer: Frogwares Platform(s): PC, PS4, Xbox One

How could a list of the best mystery games exist without the man himself, the prolific Dr. Sherlock Holmes? Though, Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments earns its spot on this list without relying on the famous name of its titular detective. Like the best detective games, this one will have you second-guessing yourself, as well as everyone you interrogate, as you work through the complex moral bargaining at its center.

Exploring the detailed environments, picking out clues, and piecing together conclusions is surgical in a way you might expect from a Sherlock Holmes game, but Crimes and Punishments adds a challenging ethical question to your choices that elevates it beyond its piers. This is Sherlock Holmes with a conscious, and Crimes and Punishments is a detective game that more than lives up to its legend.

5. Her Story

Developer: Sam Barlow Platform(s): PC, iOS, Android

Her Story is an interactive movie. There is no "gameplay" in the traditional sense, and even the visuals are live-action shots of actual actors through an actual camera. Now that that's out of the way, the reason Her Story qualifies as a game is that it's up to you to sort through various clues and decipher their meaning.

Clues exist in the form of archived clips from a police interview with a woman whose husband has gone missing and is later found murdered. The character and her relationship with her husband are fascinating to learn about, each new revelation a source of multiple new theories about whether Hannah Smith is culpable for her husband's murder.

4. What Remains of Edith Finch

Developer: Giant Sparrow Platform(s): PC, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch

For a stylish, lighthearted mystery or distraction, look elsewhere. But if you're in a mood to reflect, empathize, and become entirely absorbed in a touching, often heart-wrenching dive into loss and mortality, don't sleep on What Remains of Edith Finch. Giant Sparrow unleashed a mystery game that skirts so close to being a masterpiece, which is certainly one of the best games of the last generation . 

The story of a possible curse that leaves only one family member of each generation alive, is exactly that; a story. Some very light puzzling is all that hinders your pursuit of the mystery behind your relatives' deaths, and it'll only take a couple of hours for you to learn the truth of What Remains of Edith Finch. Like it or not, it'll probably take far longer for you escape its emotional grip.

3. Outer Wilds

Developer: Mobius Digital Platform(s): PC, PS4, Xbox One

While most mystery games are content with identifying the culprit in a small town crime, Outer Wilds seeks to solve mysteries on a much larger scale: the universe, or at least the solar system you're tasked with exploring and the infinite time loop in which it lives.

On its surface, Outer Wilds is a space exploration game about looking for clues and solving mysterious phenomena on diverse planets, but just beneath the crust lies an experience unlike anything I've ever played. Learning more about the extinct, intelligent species called Nomai compels your adventure, but the ways in which you uncover their secrets is what makes Outer Wilds so special, and I'd never forgive myself for spoiling anything.

2. Disco Elysium

Developer: ZA/UM Platform(s): Multi

If its numerous accolades, not to mention three BAFTAs, aren't enough to convince you to try out Disco Elysium, hopefully this humble little list of best mystery games will. A murder mystery and black comedy, the story kicks off with the player-character blurrily waking from a drunken stupor, only to be told he's in charge of investigating a grizzly murder. 

From an isometric perspective, you'll guide your detective through his booze-induced amnesia and toward the answer to the game's mystery by leveling up and upgrading his deductive skills and navigating different personality traits that develop based on character choice. It's an immensely complex, innovative ride that never fails to elicit both laughs and suspense.

1. Return of the Obra Dinn

Developer: 3909 LLC Platform(s): PC, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch

Return of the Obra Dinn's story of a ship that returns to port five years after having gone missing, now a mass grave for its occupants, is enthralling throughout its fairly brief run-time. Your job as an insurance adjuster is to figure out what happened to the ship's crew and passengers, who all died mysteriously or went missing en route.

The distinct monochromatic art style and wistful score offer the perfect setting to wrack your brain for clues to the Obra Dinn's ill-fated voyage, and you'll want to use every tool in your cerebral shed to find whodunnit. Return of the Obra Dinn never holds your hand, which only makes piecing together its many secrets that much more rewarding. It's undoubtedly one of the best mystery and detective games ever made, but you can really only play through it once – so do yourself a favor and go in blind, as it'll greatly enhance the experience. 

After scoring a degree in English from ASU, I worked as a copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. Now, as GamesRadar's west coast Staff Writer, I'm responsible for managing the site's western regional executive branch, AKA my apartment, and writing about whatever horror game I'm too afraid to finish.

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The best video games of 2024 so far

‘balatro,’ ‘final fantasy vii rebirth,’ ‘tekken 8’ and ‘helldivers 2’ make our evolving critic’s list of 2024’s best games.

This year’s game release schedule started out busy and strong, with several surprise hits and unique concepts, potentially making for a more interesting lineup than last year’s long-awaited, critically acclaimed titles .

While the games industry struggles to find sustainability in growth , 2024’s games showcase a healthy diversity of titles that don’t lack for creativity.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

Ubisoft is a storied games publisher that has struggled creatively in recent years. Its Montpellier, France, studio helped establish the company’s rich history of games, and this release shows it hasn’t lost its touch. “Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown” is a modern reimagining of creator Jordan Mechner’s classic adventure, now layered with exploration on par with the Metroid series.

Platforms : PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox

Initially mired in controversy for seemingly plagiarizing Pokémon, this indie Japanese game became the year’s first viral hit in games . “Palworld” once boasted more than 2 million concurrent players. In recent months, that player base has dropped to tens of thousands. That’s still a respectable audience for a surprisingly fun game that offers something Pokémon games don’t: simulation-based interaction with your furry pals.

Platforms : PC, Xbox

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth

The Like a Dragon series (formerly called Yakuza in the United States) consistently boasts the best scripts in games , and the ninth installment is no different. This time, the Honolulu location allows for the typically minigame-obsessed series to take it to the next level. “Infinite Wealth” features complete parody games of “Animal Crossing,” “Pokémon,” and “Pokémon Snap,” along with its usual suite of games.

Platforms : PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox

Like “ Street Fighter 6 ” last year, the latest Tekken installment is accessible to new players with beginner-friendly button combinations. “Tekken 8” also features the wackiest story mode in the fighting game genre, unafraid to experiment with other game types. When even Brian Cox is able to explain the story expertly and succinctly in five minutes, you know this one is for the newcomers.

Platforms : PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox

Helldivers 2

Another surprise hit, Sony and Arrowhead Game Studios created the most fun multiplayer experience in years. “Helldivers 2” lets people live out their “Starship Troopers” fantasies with simple, timeless, shoot-the-aliens gameplay. The black jungle night dotted with red eyes and lasers is a terrifying and unforgettable sight that awaits on a planet players are now calling “robot Vietnam.”

Platforms : PC, PlayStation 5

Made by a lone developer called LocalThunk, “Balatro” is a brilliant power fantasy for card players. It shows us just how fun it is to actually cheat in poker. This indie darling (which has sold more than a million copies) has become addictive by combining the chase for the perfect poker hand with special powered-up cards. Creative scoring maintains the tension of a poker match, and a solid win comes with wonderful video game pageantry. Out of all the games this year, this one probably has potential for the longest life.

Platforms : PC, macOS, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

“Rebirth’s” reimagination of “Final Fantasy VII” is, so far, the biggest story event of the year, the middle chapter of what many call one of the greatest stories in games. It’s a game that evokes the golden years of Japanese role-playing games, and the best Final Fantasy game since 2001 .

Platform : PlayStation 5

Unicorn Overlord

“Unicorn Overlord” combines overworld exploration with tactical wartime gameplay, layered with gorgeous artwork and storytelling. Every release from Vanillaware, a Japanese studio known for innovative riffs on classic genres, has the potential to be among the best in any given year, and this is no different.

Platforms : Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox

Dragon’s Dogma II

“Dragon’s Dogma 2” may seem like a run-of-the-mill fantasy game, but no other fantasy game plays quite like this. It’s part simulation, part fighting game, mixing the immediacy of high-octane action games with “The Sims” culture of messing with characters powered by artificial intelligence. These seemingly disparate goals work together to stage large-scale fantasy battles at any given point in the world, something rarely seen in any other game.

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Best Story Video Games To Play in 2024

By Rudie Obias

Rudie Obias

If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Rolling Stone may receive an affiliate commission.

At a Glance: The Best Story Games

• EDITOR’S PICK: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
• BEST FANTASY GAME: Baldur’s Gate 3
• BEST ADVENTURE: Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection
• BEST POST-APOCALYPTIC: The Last of Us, Part I & Part II
• BEST HORROR: Alan Wake II
• BEST SCI-FI: Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition
• BEST WESTERN: Red Dead Redemption II
• BEST ACTION: Horizon Forbidden West
• BEST STEALTH: A Plague Tale: Requiem

While some of the best video games are known for their action, adventure, and fantasy elements, one of the reasons you stay with particular games for a long time is their in-depth, cinematic, and emotionally-driven stories. Much like reading a good book or watching an excellent movie , you gain a real connection with a video game’s characters and stories.

We put together a list of some of the best story games, including selections we’ve played ourselves, games there were nominated or won gaming awards, and games that received higher than a four-star rating from gamers using Amazon and Best Buy , as well as the GOG.com and Humble Bundle digital distribution platforms. Here are our top choices.

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What are the best story games, buying guide; how to pick the best story game, editor’s picks, the 250 greatest guitarists of all time, the 500 greatest albums of all time, the 50 worst decisions in movie history, every awful thing trump has promised to do in a second term, 1. ‘ the legend of zelda: tears of the kingdom ‘.

With its in-depth and touching story, open-world mechanics, and strange and bizarre characters, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is one of the best games for the Nintendo Switch. You play as Link, a Hyrule Warrior and Champion in a quest to find Princess Zelda throughout time. Along the game, you travel to distant regions, rescue creatures, go on side quests and adventures, and discover what it means to be a hero, as you gain experiences and combat skills to defeat the evil Ganondorf and restore Hyrule to its former glory after the Upheaval cataclysmic event that starts the game.

In our play through, Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a leap ahead of its predecessor, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild , in just about every way from its touching storytelling and open-world design to it advanced combat mechanics and memorable cast of characters. The experience playing it is completely up to you, whether it be simple or complex.

2. ‘ Baldur’s Gate 3 ‘

Baldur’s Gate 3 is a role-playing fantasy game with open-world design that’s playable on Sony PlayStation 5 , Xbox Series X/S and Windows PC. It’s also single-player game, but also offers online multi-player cooperative mechanics.

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I’ve been using away luggage for years — here’s why i recommend it, the best sunglass brands to shop right now, 3. ‘ uncharted: legacy of thieves collection ‘.

For Sony PlayStation 5, Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection combines Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and its expansion pack The Lost Legacy into one package. The adventure game follows Sam and Nathan Drake, two treasure hunters on pursuit of Captain Henry Avery’s long lost pirate booty. The pair set off to find the pirate colony of Libertalia that’s located in Madagascar’s deep forests. The game takes you on an adventure through jungles, cities, and mountains for the ultimate prize — fortune.

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy is a different adventure within the game. However, it features a different lead character, Chloe Frazer, a treasure hunter looking for the Tusk of Ganesh in the Western Ghats in the mountains of India. She’s joined with ex-mercenary Nadine Ross, as the pair try to look for treasure, while also preventing a civil war.

Both adventures were nominated for the Golden Joystick Awards for Best Storytelling in 2016 and 2017, respectively.

4. ‘ The Last of Us, Part I & Part II ‘

Winner of the Golden Joystick Award for Best Storytelling, The Last of Us, Parts 1 & 2 — which are both playable on Sony PlayStation 5 — elevates the post-apocalyptic zombie genre with nuance, pure emotion, and just a little subversion. In fact, the storytelling in the game is so expertly told that it’s now a successful TV adaptation with eight Emmy Awards on HBO.

The story starts at the beginning of a mysterious outbreak that finds Joel, his brother Tommy, and his daughter Sarah trying to escape Austin, Texas. However, during the frenzy, Sarah is shot by a soldier and dies. It picks up 20 years later and the world is overrun with zombie-like creatures, while the fate of humanity is with a little girl named Ellie. Joel must travel and protect Ellie at all cost, while the pair form a bond that will either keep them alive or dead.

5. ‘ Alan Wake II ‘

Winner of the Game Award for Best Narrative in 2023 (along with best game direction and best art direction), Alan Wake II — which is playable for Sony PlayStation 5, Windows and Xbox Series X/S — is a survival horror game that has elements of mystery and detective narrative.

Fun fact: Alan Wake II was released in 2023, which is actually 13 years after the first game in the series was released in 2010.

6. ‘ Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition ‘

For Xbox Series X/S, Sony PlayStation 5 and PC, Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition is a Gamescom Award-winning dystopian sci-fi action game that takes place in the fictional Night City in the distant future. You play as the character V, a mercenary with a cybernetic “bio-chip” implant that features the biometrics and personality of the former terrorist turned rock star Johnny Silverhand (modeled and voiced by Keanu Reeves). But when Silverhand’s consciousness starts to take over your character, you must do everything you can to separate yourself from the charismatic visionary.

7. Red Dead Redemption II

Set in the Old West in 1899, Red Dead Redemption II — for PC, Xbox, and PlayStation — is a prequel and massive open-world game that encourages you to explore and interact with the world around you to gain experience and combat points. You play as Arthur Morgan, one of the Van der Linde gang, who must save his family of outlaws from the encroaching presence of law and order to civilize the west.

And since gameplay is dependent on your decisions and actions, the longer you play, the more you get invested in the character’s way of life and why they want to preserve the gray morality of survival of turn of the 20th century America.

8. ‘ Horizon Forbidden West ‘

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Winner of the Golden Joystick Award for Best Storytelling in 2022, Horizon Forbidden West for PlayStation 5 is set in post-apocalyptic “Burning Shores” of west coast of the United States — namely in the ruins of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Las Vegas.

The story follows Aloy, a young hunter from the Nora tribe. She’s on a quest with her band to the “Forbidden West” to find the source of a mysterious and very deadly plague in an open-world adventure. Along the way, she discovers new tribes, regions, and conflicts in an effort to put an end to the plague and restore the Earth to its former glory.

9. ‘ A Plague Tale: Requiem ‘

Released in 2022, A Plague Tale: Requiem is a action-adventure stealth game where players must hide from enemies while traversing its story. Set in Southern France during the Black Plague in the 14th century, it follows Amicia and Hugo de Rune, a pair of siblings on the hunt for Hugo’s blood disease. They have to sneak around to avoid soldiers of the Inquisition and mischiefs of rats.

A Plague Tale: Requiem — which is playable on Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, Windows, and Nintendo Switch — was nominated for five Game Awards in 2022, including best narrative, best action and adventure game, game of the year, and more.

When it comes to story games, there are many factors to think about when choosing the best ones. Below, you’ll find a few important things that we considered when putting this roundup together.

Storage: Modern gaming is almost like a double-edge sword. While there are great things about it, like in-depth storytelling, realistic graphics, precision controls, and online multiplayer, there are drawbacks too, namely storage space on consoles, long download times, and massive files. Long are the days of sliding in cartridges into a console to play your favorite games. Now you have to wait for a long time until games are completely loaded on your system (sometimes minutes, sometimes hours). This can be very frustrating when you just want to play a video game.

It’s important to be mindful of file size and storage space. Although 1TB of storage might sound like a lot, you can easily blow through that if you have games that’s are over 100GB in size.

Awards: It might be tough to find a good story game at first glance. You know the old adage, “never judge a book by its cover.” You’re not exactly sure if a story will be good unless you play it. However, a good indicator that a game might be worth spending hours playing is if it’s won (or nominated) for various awards, like the Game Awards, Golden Joystick Awards, or the D.I.C.E. (Design Innovate Communicate Entertain) Awards. These awards are consider the top tier of the gaming industry, so it might be a good starting point for new gamers to check out winners and nominees.

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Which Ohio State football player has best case for being on cover of EA Sports’ College Football 25? Buckeye Breakfast

• Updated: Apr. 30, 2024, 4:04 p.m. |
• Published: Apr. 30, 2024, 5:00 a.m.

OSU WR Emeka Egbuka during the Buckeye’s Student Appreciation practice March 30, 2024. John Kuntz, cleveland.com

• Stephen Means, cleveland.com

COLUMBUS, Ohio - We’re just months away from college football’s return to gaming systems with EA Sports’ College Football 25 set to release this summer with plenty of Ohio State football players expected to be featured.

More information on the video game is expected to be released sometime in May, but one interesting question has emerged: Could a Buckeye be featured on the cover?

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‘xdefiant’ doesn’t feel like a ‘call of duty’ killer to me.

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I’ve now played Ubisoft’s upcoming “Call Of Duty killer” XDefiant in several different test sessions, including the Server Stress Test this April, and I’ve come away from each of these with mixed feelings.

XDefiant is an upcoming free-to-play game being developed by Ubisoft San Francisco based on the Tom Clancy video game franchises that Ubisoft has made over the years. Operators in the game are pulled from factions out of games like Watch Dogs, Ghost Recon, The Division and Splinter Cell, though the game now goes beyond Tom Clancy IP to include Far Cry.

The game is an arcade shooter similar to Call Of Duty, focused on fast gameplay with a modern, military arsenal. Matches are mostly small-scale 6v6 as opposed to games like Battlefield that have large-scale battles with vehicles and so forth. Game modes are very similar to Call Of Duty, including Domination, TDM and an Escort mode. Maps are similar to Call Of Duty modes as well.

Given there are actually very few games that do this type of fast-paced, small-scale FPS action and appeal to a more casual fanbase, XDefiant is a welcome addition to the field. Many gamers upset by Call Of Duty for one reason or another are excited about some competition, and I agree that Call Of Duty needs that competition—something that will benefit everyone in the long-run . . . if it works out.

While the game is certainly fun, it falls short of Call Of Duty in almost every way that matters, and while a number of these things could be improved over time, some of the game’s fundamentals are simply not clicking for me. Let’s go over a few of the major points that have left me feeling a bit unsatisfied with XDefiant at this stage.

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• Movement feels clunky and floaty. Moving around in this game simply doesn’t feel as good as CoD, especially now that we’re comparing it to Modern Warfare III, which has nailed down satisfying movement perfectly. XDefiant feels clunky by comparison, and moving around a map feels less grounded and precise. MWIII has such terrific mantling, sliding and general movement that XDefiant really pales in comparison.
• Gunplay is only okay. Some of this comes down to netcode, some of it comes down to small details in how gunplay is designed (see the video below for an in-depth examination) but the final result is gunplay that feels weirdly imprecise. Ubisoft also hasn’t captured the sound design that makes shooting so satisfying in CoD titles. It’s still pretty fun, though, and for a free-to-play title isn’t bad.
• The announcer is awful. Yes, you can mute the announcer as he hollers nonsense at you (including praise for killstreaks you did not get) but it’s just emblematic of some of the weird game design decisions in XDefiant that we would be assaulted by such an egregious announcer to begin with.
• I really hate powers. This is the on thing that might be a dealbreaker for me. If I want to play a hero shooter, I have plenty to choose from. I can go play Overwatch for my power-equipped FPS experience. When I play a Call Of Duty game, I want to be able to kit out however I please, without any types of powers at all (beyond Killstreaks, obviously). This was one of the biggest bones I had to pick with Black Ops IIII, and I hate it in XDefiant. Each faction has its own Active Abilities, Passive Abilities and Ultra Abilities, which range from fire drones to an Ult that let’s you effectively wall-hack. One faction has healing powers. This makes XDefiant a Hero Shooter rather than a CoD killer and I genuinely hate it. I would much rather just equip my gear—including stims or fire bombs or whatever—and switch that out however I please rather than having to pick a faction with powers. Powerful Ults, meanwhile, are disruptive to game balance and completely take me out of the experience, especially since these Ults are far less balanced than Killstreaks/Scorestreaks in CoD (which can be bad enough at times).
• Other than no SBMM, why play XDefiant? Seriously, Modern Warfare III is just objectively better with way more content, better movement, better gunplay, a much more consistent pipeline for new content, a baked-in playerbase, Warzone etc. If XDefiant had SBMM, would there be a single reason to choose it other than variety?

As of right now, XDefiant is certainly a game that I’d play when I’m bored of Call Of Duty, but not one that would replace it very often. I’d have a hard time getting my squad to switch over to in any meaningful way. We’ll play other types of games like Overwatch now and then, but that’s different enough to be a wholly unique experience, whereas XDefiant currently feels like a cheap knock-off version of Call Of Duty, like those off-brand LEGO clones, or fake G.I. Joe action figures.

Ubisoft should have focused on creating an incredibly solid FPS with lots of maps and modes and left the gimmicky powers out. In fact, leaving out powers and Killstreaks would have been a great way to distinguish it from Call Of Duty, promising players a more level playing field to test their skills. That alone would make this a much more appealing prospect. As it stands, from what we’ve seen there are neither many maps nor many modes and the game has its toes dipped into military arcade and hero shooter, destined to only half-please fans of either genre.

Fans of the game praise its lack of Skill-Based Matchmaking, but from the lobbies I’ve been in, this doesn’t really change the experience that much at all. I get hard and easy lobbies in Call Of Duty already, and the same exact thing was true in XDefiant. We’ll see if over time it makes much of a difference. I have doubts.

Check out XclusiveAce’s video on what makes the game feel “off” below:

What do you think of XDefiant so far? Will it be able to survive against Warzone and the upcoming Black Ops: Gulf War ?

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