Best of 2013: Puzzle Games

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

14 Comments.

  1. 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! :mrgreen: )

  2. Bring back Cake Monsters!

  3. I think it’s interesting that Ancient Greek Geometry is the only one on the list that is not 2D grid-based…

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. Wow! This is really nice, you guys.

  7. (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).

  8. 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.