Dwarven Den is barely a puzzle game; while the earlier levels might seem clever and lure players in with a slow difficulty curve, the game becomes quite difficult past a certain point which left me wondering about what 'puzzles' are when maps are randomly generated, resources are scarce and of course, sold for real money.
BattleBlock Theater is a platforming game where you need to collect gems in order to complete sets of level with an ever increasing amount of mechanics stacking on top of each other. This game is pretty quirky with the way it tells a story and it's also in general pretty good, although I've found that it wasn't focused enough in the platformer way or the puzzle way for my tastes.
Paperma is an okay little puzzle game where you fold paper around in order to fill a certain area of the screen with it. You have a limited number of moves to do so and a percentage score that tells you how much of the area you've filled - and how much of the outside area isn't filled. If you get stuck, you can buy hints that reveal the next move you should do. It's one of these calm puzzle games where you can solve a bunch of time while taking your time.
I've been very disappointed by MagRunner: Dark Pulse, the stuff I read about the game made it seemed like it was going to be much like portal and then at some point become scary/creepy/gory in some way shape or form, or involve monsters of some sort. After playing it for a few hours and being stuck at some puzzle at the beginning, I decided that I wasn't ready for what was to follow and didn't enjoy my time at all.
Tales of the Adventure Company is a game where you have to go through floors of grid dungeons in order to fight a boss, along the way you defeat random enemies with various powers and weaknesses, collect new party members and find potions to boost them. I had a good time with this game, although there are a few bugs here and there like keys appearing out of nowhere and interface layers piling up on top of each other for no reason.
Bicolor is a fun little puzzle game with very little issues. Then again, the gameplay is also pretty straightforward, you have to fill the screen with one color by moving tiles around. They have a number on them, and that’s the number of squares you have to move them before they disapear.
Lego Marvel Super Heroes isn’t very good. The last lego game I’ve played was the first Star Wars one and that was a while ago. While I think this game has some charm with its characters and references and while I think somee of the core gameplay is quite solid, there was too much of a confusing mess when I tried playing this one and I stopped pretty quickly to go spend my time somewhere else.
Knights of Puzzelot is a haunted game, haunted by the specter or free to play mechanics and tactics to get your money. The core game is quite good, but that’s even more of a bummer when almost every step of the way, I’m left wondering if something is difficult because they want me to pay, or if it’s just annoying for the sake of convincing me to pay, or wondering if the next level is going to be the one where I have to grind or pay to get past.
There is a brutal simplicity in Hitman Go, one that flows from it’s very clean design and the refined list of actions players can take, one that stems from well-designed puzzles that eschews randomness in favor of careful logic and planning. That simplicity was a two-edged sword, but I had a fantastic time with Hitman Go
Games where you match blocks are not that rare, but I love those with RPG elements and clever mechanics here and there. 10000000(000?) was a good example of such a game, but Block Legend is less so. I found that a few mechanics were superfluous or not well thought out and the progression was almost doing more harm than good.
While it might look like an innocent match-3 game with RPG mechanics, Puzzling Rush is terrible, for the single reason that never ever, any mechanics are explained, leaving the player with a bunch of symbols and ‘HELP’ screens that are confusing and impossible to decipher.
Threes is simple fun, it’s an addictive little puzzle game and while it’s distilled to the core of it’s gameplay concepts - almost to a bare-bones extreme - its simplicity allows for a fun five minutes here and there of moving tiles around.
Puzzle Quest Galactrix is a sad puzzle videogame in the line of other great Puzzle Quests. It’s core gameplay is perfectly fine, mind you, but it is ruined by abysmal controls between fights and poorly designed UIs and quests. I enjoyed my time solving puzzles and fighting, but everything between that was painfully boring.
Even with such a name, The “Amazing” Alex isn’t an amazing game. Maybe clever at first, coalescing thoughts about The Amazing Machine of old, but soon a sour disappointment with puzzles based on luck and gratuitous trial-and-error with a broken interface and lack of depth will replace any fondness you might hold for the game.
The Room 2 is the sequel to another puzzle game of the same title where you solve gigantic mechanical puzzles by sliding, opening, poking, turning, finding and placing objects on a fantastical device only to peel layers upon layers of additional puzzles hidden inside the first ones. It’s a pretty good game, but not as good as the original.
Containment: The Zombie Puzzler is a little action-puzzle game where you have to swap differently suited citizens around zombies to kill them. Instead of matching 3, you have to box them in, and then the zombies die and new citizens march in and you get power-up sometimes. I can't say it grabbed me.
I'm not sure what I was expecting when I started playing Gunpoint, but it surely wasn't a puzzle game. I thought it was going to be a neat little 2d shooter with some platforming spliced in and an interesting story. I realized pretty quickly that it was a mix of stealth and puzzle more than anything. Great stealth and puzzles.
Device-6 is a puzzle game that prefers style over substance; While it is very interesting visually to have some kind of novel where the orientation of the words change and you scroll through the story like you were a character moving in a book, actually playing it never felt 'fun' for me, the puzzles were more alike to busywork than brain teasers. Also, even if it has no impact on the gameplay argument, I didn't find the story particularity interesting, therefore that failed to grab me and prevented me from deleting it.
Even with its buggy programming and weird tutorial decisions, Marvel Puzzle Quest is great. This iOS/Android free to play puzzle game offers a variety of characters, levels, upgrades and gameplay systems that made me play it a ton. The free to play hooks aren't too bad and don't remove from a good experience matching gems and being the hawkeye.
Puzzle and Dragons is insanely successful, it seems. I've decided to try it out as soon as it went live on the Canadian app store, and my god, it is a load of nonsense. The core mechanic of the game (moving gems on a board) manages to be mostly luck-based and somehow less refined than old match-3 games and/or Tetris Attack and/or puzzle quest managed to do years ago. The monster collection part is also completely nonsensical and random but at the same time, vital to progress through the game.