Number 10:

Cratopia
by CHz
Number 9:

it dies in the light
by Christopher Wells
Number 8:

Lime Rick
by KissMaj7
Number 7:

Let’s play Ancient Greek Geometry
by Nico Disseldorp
Number 6:

Dang I’m Huge
by Guilherme Töws
Number 5:

TRIAD
by Anna Anthropy, Leon Arnott, Liz Ryerson
Number 4:

Heroes of Sokoban 3
by Jonah Ostroff
Number 3:

Heroes of Sokoban 2
by Jonah Ostroff
Number 2:

Heroes of Sokoban
by Jonah Ostroff
Number 1:

Jelly No Puzzle
by Qrostar
I think I would put heroes of sokoban 3 as my favorite puzzle game this year. I loved the way the druid and bard played off of each other. Also I am awful at Jelly no Puzzle.
When I compare this batch of games to the last year’s, this seems like a much less varied batch of puzzle games. Puzzlescript was probably the coolest thing to happen this year for this genre (Thanks Stephen!
)
Bring back Cake Monsters!
I think it’s interesting that Ancient Greek Geometry is the only one on the list that is not 2D grid-based…
Good observation. Any that you think I missed?
Counterfeit Monkey, perhaps?
I was thinking “hmm, well, nothing springs to mind” and then I looked up the Highly Recommended archives and realised to my dismay that I’d forgotten the love of my damn life!
Heroes of sokoban is the call of duty of puzzlescript. Expect Heroes of sokoban: dogs soon.
Ancient greek geometry is still mindblowing
Can someone who knows something about video games explain this analogy for me?
Call of Duty is a franchise of military-themed first person shooters, known for yearly installments. The latest Call of Duty game heavily marketed the addition of a dog companion, mocked by some gamers as evidence that the developers have run out of ideas.
The above poster draws parallels between the Call of Duty franchise’s prolific release schedule and yours. Perhaps with a hint of dismissal based on the assumption that a relatively short iteration time affected the games’ individual quality. A bit unfair, since the different heroes lend themselves to unique-feeling, satisfying puzzles in each installment and Puzzlescript lends itself well to rapid iteration.
Since it’s excluded from being on this list by virtue of being made by one of the site’s editors, it seems worth adding here that Terry’s small game Collapse brings something special to the form. It might be the most…evocative of the puzzlescript games so far.
I was also really taken with Signal (another puzzlescript game not featured on the site), with its somewhat deceptively conventional opening rounds and its five or six mechanical reveals, each revealing things already true about its ruleset from the start but simply impossible or difficult to intuit until teased out by later screens. But maybe I’m just a sucker for exactly that sort of structure: secrets opening not new vistas but wrinkles in the acts you’ve already been performing.
Collapse may share that structure to a certain extent, now that I think of it, which might explain why I was particularly drawn to both.
Yeah, Signal is great. I’m also really fond of Diego Cathalifaud’s Telekin, which sadly hasn’t been featured on here either.
Wow! This is really nice, you guys.
(this list comes with the disclaimer that the compiler, me, made puzzlescript, which a lot of the games on it use. I tried to be unbiased in my subjectivity, but eh).
Oh man, Triad is so good! I thought it would just be a series of puzzles. The way it ended up sticking to the narrative was super cool.