My Top 5 - Puzzle Games

To me, puzzle games are an archetypal form of cozy game.  Curling up with my switch and a puzzle game makes me feel like a sweet old grandpa doing a sudoku as he sits by a roaring fire.  Here are my favourite puzzle games I've played so far.  

 

Honorable Mentions:

Thomas was Alone - This charming platformer involves using your different character's specific abilities to problem solve.  Definitely more puzzle-y than most platformers but not enough to earn a place on the list.

Zelda games - Most games in the Zelda series involve some level of puzzle solving, most commonly in their dungeons or shrines.  These puzzles can be fun, creative, and often involve quite a lot of thought, but vary hugely in their significance to the overall gameplay.  Breath of the Wild is a wonderful game, but part of what gives it mass appeal is that the game designers reduced the number of puzzles needed to complete the plot compared to others in the series. 

Tetris - An excellent puzzle game, an obvious classic.  I see it a bit more as an arcade game than a puzzle game so it doesn't make the list.

5. Portal 1 & 2 by Valve

Portal is the kind of gold-standard for a first-person game that is also an incredible puzzle game.  It has a fun (creepy) story that works well to justify why you encounter so many puzzles.  

As someone with a physics background, I really love the way this game uses videogame physics in an inventive way.  Whether or not the player knows it, they are using their inherent understanding of Newton's laws to problem solve.  Players know to speed an object up by letting it fall (accelerated by gravity), before sending it through a portal to make it go in the right direction (turning the vertical speed into horizontal speed).

Doesn't rank higher because it's kind of inherently creepy, not the kind of cozy game I would play to relax.  

 

Fun Features: Playing for extended periods alone will lead to you feeling like you are in fact in the game, with only technology for comfort.  Maybe a little too immersive. 

4. The Nancy Drew Series by Her Interactive

To many, these are a staple of the early PC era, but I only discovered them recently by chance in a Jenny Nicholson patreon video.  I absolutely love them.  I love the low-quality graphics, I love the puzzles, I love the escape-room feel of point-and-click games.  

Each game in the series has it's own special setting and creepy-looking CG characters.  To me, this makes it really easy to choose which one to play next; I love fairgrounds so I chose the one set at a theme park, I love old clocks so I chose the Secret of the Old Clock etc.

The mysteries are fairly well plotted, and while it can be easy to get lost, the games are mostly very user friendly for something made in the early 2000s.

The puzzles are extremely rewarding.  Some take a long time to complete or rely on you having found clues around the enviroments, and to me that makes it more fun to play.

(Stills from Nancy Drew: Shadow at the Water's Edge)

Fun Feature: Sometimes when you complete a puzzle it will do a really elaborate but low quality animation that you can tell the Her Interactive staff worked their butts off to make.  It's very endearing.

3. Baba is You by Hempuli

This is a game like none I've played before.  The movement and look are reminiscent of a retro 2D dungeoncrawler, but the gameplay involves no fighting, no items, no exploring of dungeons.  Instead, Baba is You relies of you completing all of its levels by using logic, changing the rules of the game to suit you.

The rules are stated in little boxes at the start of each level; quaint little statements like "CRAB is WIN", "ROSE has KEY" or the eponymous "BABA is YOU".   You then have the ability to change the rules, doing everything from giving you the ability to walk through walls, to changing what you are.  

The game is really clever and exceptionally charming.  It's quite simple and accessible to anyone (you can do alternative levels if one ends up stumping you), but especially good for those who like logic games or coding. The character design is simple but really very sweet.  Baba is adorable, as are other characters like Keke and Anni.

 

Fun Features: After an hour or so playing this game, you will end up talking like the directions in the game.  Be prepared to say things like "Baba is me!" and "Crab is hot!" whenever you see a little creature.

2. The Professor Layton series by Level 5

This series of 6 games (with 2 spin-offs, 1 crossover and a movie), is hardly going to be unheard of to anyone reading this list.  Layton has been a staple of Nintendo for over a decade now, and for good reason.

Layton is extremely cozy, story-driven and full of puzzles.  Just about everything I love from a game. The music is gorgeous, the stories are wonderful (these games have made me cry multiple times), and overall the experience is extremely atmospheric.  

The Professor is a man after my own heart - he loves solving and dishing out puzzles at every possible opportunity. 

Some people get really annoyed by how many puzzles you have to solve to progress with the plot but as evidenced by the fact that I'm writing this post, this has never been a problem for me.  In fact, the most recent Layton spinoff was decidedly less fun for me because of the reduced number of puzzles.  I kept clicking on random objects in the environment like plants and windows, hoping that it would yield a puzzle.  

 

Fun Features:  Beautiful scenery, nostalgic music, cute/weird characters and fun little animal companions and minigames. They all some together to create a version of Britain that I wish were actually real (I wish the UK currency was picarats not pounds). 

1. Gorogoa by Annapurna

Gorogoa is reminiscent of a beautiful, interactive Where's Wally? book.  It's like walking through the pages of an illustrated book, finding the linkages from one page to the next.  It's premise is original - a kind of 'click and point' game where you move and inspect 4 images at once to interact with one another.  

It's a very short game (or not so short, if you get stumped by one of the many tricky puzzles), but tells a beautiful visual story.  I've always loved noticing little details in a large intricate painting, so it feels like Gorogoa was made for me - every detail in the game has its meaning, or its use in solving a puzzle.  

 

Fun Feature: After you have completed it, you can give someone else a go at solving it.  You'll get to see the beautiful illustrations again and you can be incredibly smug that you know the answers.