![]() ![]() One of the coolest experiences in gaming, and has some definite thinky puzzle-ness going on. *Return of the Obra Dinn: A mystery whodunnit story game. (Try to get at least one star! You’ll know when you’ve got one.) A 2D platformer. A classic, and a great game to get you hooked. Then the same dev released A Monster’s Expedition, which is the same thing but better. This used to be a strong go-to introductory recommendation. *A Good Snowman is Hard to Build: A game about pushing snowballs to build snowmen. *A Monster’s Expedition: A game about pushing logs around islands, to explore a museum of human stuff. *Baba is You: A game all about changing the rules of the game. The list of games! (* means introductory, but introductory means accessible/pretty, not easy.) I’m not really here to define anything in any rigorous manner. If you think a game is a thinky puzzle game, it’s a thinky puzzle game. I don’t like to gatekeep games, and the thinky puzzle label is only useful to the extent it helps me and others describe and share a certain style of game that I happen to like. I also like many, many games that aren’t this genre. ![]() Recent examples include: Murder by Numbers, Greyhat, and Unheard. In addition, I haven’t included some puzzle games I love but don’t quite fit with the others here. Games I didn’t personally like are not included, mostly as I don’t want to be mean about anyone’s hard work here. It’s not even every (paid) game I like in the genre :( This is not every (paid) game I’ve played in the genre. ![]() If you want free recommendations, contact me! For now, I’m focusing on paid ones so you get guaranteed ~production value, and because there are far too many free games to list. :)Įventually, I’ll add more free/web games to this list. If you need to do the puzzle to proceed, then consider looking up the solution and instead solving the puzzle of “reverse engineering the aha moment based off the solution.” Puzzle games are about having fun, not about completion, competition, or smarts.Įventually, I’ll probably add links and pictures to this page, but I don’t use this page enough to want to do it right now. If you get too stuck on a puzzle, then skip it and come back later. In particular, play through to see the mechanics you like and to have fun. I’ve always played through enough to see most of the mechanics though. I have not finished some of these games, and have 100%-ed very, very few of them. Usually they’re made by indie devs: there’s a Discord and everything! And if you know some computer science, these games are often theoretically NP-hard, PSPACE-hard, or even RE-hard-but all the best ones are designed explicitly with humans in mind.Īnyway, I figured I’d just make a page with a list of games I both like and consider to be thinky puzzle games, so I can send it to people like you, and you could maybe try some out…? And if you’ve played one or two already, it might tell you the type of game I’m talking about :) boring caveats/disclaimers that you should skip unless you are thinking about complaining about my list Lots of them are grid-based and involve pushing things around? Imagine those puzzles you played as a kid where you had to get a car out of a busy parking lot, or the ice gym puzzles in Pokemon, but like… much less brute-force-y and more filled with fun “aha!” moments. ![]() They’re not necessarily hard puzzles-some of the games below are probably pretty easy-but they’re non-routine puzzle games that have some nice moments of realization. Sometimes people ask me about video games I like, and I have to explain to them that my favorite genre of games are “ thinky puzzle games.” I have kinda struggled to explain what these are for a while, and people online joke about them being hard to define. ![]()
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