Welcome to Puzzle Lovers! - Play Hard. Think Harder.

Continued from the first part

• 🎉 BarrelBots (3D Sokoban): A 3D Sokoban with barrels, but what sets it apart is the fact that the height unit isn’t your height. You are 2 units high, with the grabber arm at the top half, and there are steps of height 1, and barrels of height 2 and 3. That half-height increment makes it very hard to wrap your mind around. And, since you’re grabbing barrels, it’s not really pushing, just like in Stephen’s Sausage Roll or Bonfire Peaks, the challenge with movement is about turning around, navigating tight spaces, and finding the right height. There are some really clever levels in there! The goal in each level is to get a tall barrel to the exit, which you can then use in the overworld to build paths to new levels. The overworld is pretty linear in the demo, but it hints at more complex puzzles to come in the full game. And I even found a hidden second barrel in one of the levels, which makes me wonder if there are others I missed. I’d better take a closer look. This is an excellent game, except that it’s a little bit buggy. I did encounter a few glitches, though they were mostly visual. (my playthrough)
  
  
• 🎉 Colorboration (sokoban, pathfinding): This is actually very close in mechanics to Box or Void, but instead of just black and white, there are multiple colors in play here. You can switch between colored avatars, which can only move on tiles of their own color. To move across different colors, they can go into boxes of their own color and hitch a ride when another avatar pushes that box. (my playthrough)
  
  
• 🎉 Crushed In Time (point&click adventure): There Is No Game is such a beloved game — or isn’t it? Among its many funny moments is the game-within-a-game featuring Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, who “solve” paranormal mysteries that you, the real person outside the game, are actually solving—or causing? Well, Crushed In Time sees the two fumbling characters return in yet another supernatural adventure, once more as clueless virtual characters in a broken game. When a mysterious upwards-falling letter is delivered to Sherlock Holmes, it sets in motion another funny, fourth-wall-breaking adventure through space and time. Many others have tried—and failed—to replicate the success of “TING”, but this is the first time I’ve actually felt that same sense of delight. You can’t copy genius! (my playthrough)
  
  
• 🎉 Elementalist (logic, resource management, platformer): Updated demo. While this looks like a platformer, it is closer to a resource management game like I Wanna Lockpick. The premise is that you can collect elemental power-ups like extra jump, dash, and slide, but each element can be used once, and only in the reverse order in which you collect them, so the main focus is on building the right stack of powers. And yet there’s much more than that, with plenty of levels subverting expectations with niche peculiarities of its mechanics. While the focus is on the thinky part, there is a bit of precision platforming, though only in short bursts, and the undo system makes it easy to retry just the tricky part. (my playthrough)
  
  
• 🎉 FamCram (multiagent pathfinding, puzzle): Help a dad wrangle his two unruly kids. Each level has two kids and a dad, moving in sync, to bring the kids to their target spots at the same time. But you only control the dad; the kids try to copy the dad when possible. This means that if the dad cannot move, nobody moves, but if a kid cannot move, it will bump against the obstacle while the dad and the other kid move. It’s a version of multi-agent simultaneous movement with one controlling agent. Of course, as is normal for kids, things get more complicated when the “contrarian” mechanism is introduced, and one or both kids move in opposition to the dad. While the game mechanics aren’t that innovative for experienced fans of thinky games, the theme is really well done and will for sure captivate children, and put an all-too-knowing smile on any parent’s face. (my playthrough)
  
  
• 🎉 The Gardener (pathfinding, logic): Who knew mowing grass could make for such a clever puzzle? Each level is a little garden covered in grass of varying heights, which you must cut as short as possible without overcutting it to 0. In more abstract terms, it’s a grid of numbered tiles, and you must find a path that brings all the numbers down to 1. I would have enjoyed it even with a purely abstract mathematical presentation (and I did enjoy the very similar Number Stomper), but The Gardener manages to make it very immersive, right down to the annoyingly incessant buzzing of the motor. And it gets better: each “wing” of the garden introduces a new mechanic—a type of flower that imposes additional requirements on the grass around it. The levels are well-designed, and the presentation is strong; the only two things I don’t like are the motor sound and the lack of an accelerator pedal to move faster between gardens. (my playthrough)
  
  
• 🎉 Helix: Descent N Ascent (puzzle adventure, exploration, arcade, knowledge discovery): A very stylized puzzle adventure that has you running through the same couple of levels over and over, each time with a different subset of abilities that let you explore new routes and reach new areas. When you can summon boxes, you can drop them into water to make bridges, but when you can summon a drone, you can send it through narrow vents. Each ability, when applied correctly, leads to a new room that unlocks the next ability you can use. There are also hidden scroll fragments you can collect, which provide clues for meta puzzles. It’s quite diverse, with different types of puzzles, but they’re all centered on the theme of reaching new places. I really like how the same level is structured to support multiple paths through it, with mysterious inaccessible areas or non-working objects that only reveal their purpose on a later pass. It also has a strong art style, with high contrast, great detail, a striking black-and-white look, and solid sound design. (my playthrough)
  
  
• 👍 Loop of Command (logic, programming-like): A light factory-builder/programming game where most of the factory is already built. There’s a single conveyor belt with a few colored blocks on it, and your job is to finish coloring them to match a target output. For example, the belt might start as WWBWWB, but you need to end up with WBWWBW. To help you, you have a few painting robots, each running a repeating three-step paint program and equipped with a limited set of paint commands. At first, there’s just one fixed robot and simple “Paint White” and “Paint Black” commands, but things quickly get more challenging: you can choose where a robot sits, there may be multiple robots, you gain access to a “Flip Paint” command, and you may get more colors, not just black and white. On top of that, each command only has a limited number of uses. Despite only having three command slots per robot, the puzzles become quite challenging. (my playthrough)
  
  
• 👍 Metanoia (pathfinding, sokoban-ish, logic): A telekinetic Sokoban without a player. On a grid of abstract geometric shapes, one of them is “activated.” The activated shape can push and pull the objects touching one of its sides—its “neighbors.” However, the activated shape itself never moves, and its neighbors can be quite far away. You can also transfer the active state to one of these neighbors. It’s simple once you grasp the mechanics, but it did take me a while to understand what was going on. It doesn’t help that the game is very abstract, with chalk-on-blackboard-style graphics. Still, the puzzles are good, though the demo ended abruptly just as it was getting interesting. I liked it; it’s a unique type of puzzle. (my playthrough)
  
  
• 😐 Mirealle (exploration, pathfinding, 3D): A puzzle game about exploring beautiful architecture. You move up and down stairs and ladders, flip switches, press buttons, and create new paths until you reach the glowing crystal. It’s a strong concept: it has a beautiful visual style, a story about a girl trying to save her dog, and simple controls. But something feels off. The levels tend to be long, with a lot of slow back-and-forth box movement between opposite sides of the area. Sometimes clicking on an element doesn’t work. If I pull a lever to move a platform up or down, but I’m not standing on it, the game softlocks: I have no way to reach the platform again and have to start over. It seems promising, but it clearly needs more work. (my playthrough)
  
  
• 🎉 Nullis (connect-2, logic): A quantum twist on Match-3—or rather, Connect-2. On a grid filled with quantum bits, you draw paths that connect at least two qubits, causing those tiles to disappear and everything above them to fall. Your goal is to eliminate all the 0 qubits, while the 1 qubits act like dead cells and can’t be part of a chain. Because this is quantum, some tiles are in both the 1 and 0 state. These superposed qubits can be used in chains, but don’t have to be eliminated. There are also decaying qubits with a turn limit; if you don’t remove them in time, they explode, and you fail the level. Unlike the large, arduous, fast, and flashy levels in something like Candy Crush, Nullis is a proper thinky game. Each puzzle is small and must be solved in very few moves—usually fewer than five—with the focus on setting up the perfect chain a turn or two later, rather than greedily maximizing each move. If you like candy-matching games, give this one a try. If you don’t like candy-matching games, also give this one a try. And if you’re in a superposition of liking and not liking candy-matching games, then this is definitely a game you should try. (my playthrough)
  
  
• 🎉 Outpacked (block puzzle, logic): Finally, a block puzzle that’s more than just block placement through trial and error! A block puzzle is simple: given a bunch of shapes, place them so they all fit inside the target grid. And in essence, this is it, but there are logical restrictions about how the objects can or cannot touch, and you don’t have to fit all the objects in the grid. Each level comes with requirements and restrictions. Each object adds (or removes) several points in one or more categories. For example, a phone adds 3 entertainment points, and a cookie adds 2 food points but removes 1 liquid point. You have to meet a quota, like 5 entertainment, 4 food, 2 liquid, and 6 plushies. Plus, rules like hot stuff cannot touch melty stuff, keep liquids away from your electronics, and all fragile things must only touch soft items. Bigger plushies take up more space, but smaller plushies may not be enough to wrap all your fragile vases. How do you balance all the needs and restrictions with the limited space in your suitcase? I really enjoyed this demo, a unique, captivating experience, perfectly mixing logic into block puzzles. (my playthrough)
  
  
• 🎉 Phonopolis (adventure, point&click): I think it would be enough just to mention who makes this game to pique your interest: Amanita Design, the makers of such wonderful, bizarre, or wonderfully bizarre games like Machinarium, Samorost, Chuchel, and Creaks. In a break with past practices, this is a fully narrated game, and in a perfect fit with the times, it’s about a dystopian world living under the authoritarian rule of a dictator. Everyone is being controlled through omnipresent loudspeakers, barking orders non-stop, and soon the Absolute Tone will strip every citizen of their humanity forever. But you accidentally became impervious to these commands, and somehow seem to be the only human aware of the nefarious plot and its terrible consequences. Can you evade capture and reach the resistance? (my playthrough)
  
  
• 😐 Rope (arcade, speed, score attack): A fast-paced puzzle game where you move through a grid, tracing colored lines as you go. Your goal is to connect four or more lines of the same color to clear them and score points. If you’re forced to draw over an existing rope, you lose a heart. Colors are random, and you have only a short time to choose your next move. Overall, it feels somewhat similar to Tetris. (my playthrough)
  
  
• 🎉 Schrodinger's Cat Burglar (logic, adventure, resource management, pathfinding): Updated demo. A lovely game, part exploration, roaming an underground lab with secret tunnels and vents, furniture to climb and stuff to knock down, computers to hack, mice to catch, and part puzzle solving, in which you can split yourself into two different cats and recombine at will. And as fun as the cat antics are, the puzzles are really thinky. Besides the cat splitting, lots of other “quantum” mechanics are present: objects that can also split, or be transferred between the two cats, gates that only let one of the cats through, observed and unobserved cats… And if you played this in previous events like the Cerebral Showcase, this is a new demo with different levels, so it’s worth trying again. (my playthrough)
  
  
• 🎉 Sophia's Path (pathfinding, stepping, Lara Croft GO-like): A pathfinding game in the style of Lara Croft GO and Hitman GO, set in Ancient Greece. It’s more wholesome: instead of assassinations or dangerous spelunking, you explore a village and its surroundings, talking with friends, helping the elderly, and earning badges for your exploits. There are lightly hidden objects to find and inspect, each rewarding you with a bit of historical trivia or story. Every level has optional challenges—typically solving it in a limited number of moves, finding all the interesting objects, and collecting the treasure—with a few other achievement types too. The puzzles are solid, and the art direction is strong. Overall, it’s a great family-friendly, educational take on the GO formula. (my playthrough)
  
  
• ☹️ Snake Coil: Puzzle Adventure (sliding one-line/hamiltonian): A sliding one-line, help a snake cover the entire grid. The tail end of the snake stays in place, and when the head moves, it keeps moving until it hits something. Classic genre, very popular as an ad factory on mobiles, and this one doesn’t seem to try to do anything unique. Basic mechanics, basic levels, slow transitions between levels, and there is no undo feature. (my playthrough)
  
  
• 🎉 Sokogram (nonogram, sokoban, logic): Sokogram is a mixture of Sokoban and nonograms. Each level is played in two stages. First, you solve a nonogram, where the shaded tiles are land, and the unshaded ones are water. On the grid, there’s also a player character (you) and possibly a goal for yourself, boxes, and goals for the boxes. Once the nonogram is solved, you have to cover all the goals—either with your avatar if there’s a goal for it, with boxes if there are box goals, or with both. If it were just that, it wouldn’t be too hard, but instead of nonograms with a unique solution, wildcard clues create multiple possible solutions, and you have to figure out which of them also allows a valid path through the Sokoban level. The nonograms by themselves aren’t hard, and the Sokoban sections by themselves aren’t hard either, but somehow the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I love Sokoban, and I really like nonograms, so seeing both combined in such a clever way really made my day! (my playthrough)
  
  
• 👍 Suitcase Stories (packing, cozy): A cozy packing game in the vein of A Little to the Left. You must pack things into suitcases, boxes, backpacks, lunch bags, and so on, and while this isn’t hard, just like in ALttL, sometimes you have to find multiple solutions, like do you sort the camera filters by their color or by their number? It’s in the perfect spot between cozy and thinky, easy enough for everybody, but with occasional challenges for those who want to get all the stars. (my playthrough)
  
  
• 🎉 A Thread Between (pathfinding, sokoban, multiagent): OK, I must admit that calling this a Sokoban is a stretch. While there are boxes to push, that’s just a secondary mechanic; there’s a lot more going on. You play as a virtual spider exploring split timelines. Each level requires you to reach the exit, but the way there is often blocked by force fields. Or you might need a ride on a movable platform, or to build the path yourself, or to pick a lock. Sometimes you can do this by yourself, but sometimes you need the help of a ghostly clone of yourself (wait, what do you call the ghost of a virtual avatar?) The game takes a maximalist approach, boasting over 25 different mechanics in the full game, though not all are present in this shorter demo, and I think it also counts every combination of mechanics. But it is good, I didn’t feel overwhelmed by all the new mechanics, though I did feel that some are a little too easy. (my playthrough)
  
  
• 🎉 Tiling Town (logic, tiling): The maker of Maxwell's puzzling demon, the winner of the Most Challenging Game in the 2024 Thinky Awards, is back with a game that, at first glance, looks trivial, but in reality might win next year’s Most Challenging Game award. The demo for the upcoming Tiling Town is called Tiling Forest, and is actually a full-fledged standalone game that will keep you busy for several hours. The goal of the game is to draw a single path, a so-called Hamiltonian circuit, through a level. That type of game has been done countless times in trivial mobile games, so surely there’s more to it; it couldn’t be a contender for the most challenging game award, right? While it starts with a couple of trivial levels, it soon shows its true nature: you can’t just draw a path freely; you must gain access to tiles with the right shape. After the few trivial levels, you gain access to several levels at once, none of which seem to be easily solvable, so the game becomes figuring out which of the many levels can be filled in and how. And besides the 2 straight paths and 4 different turns that let you draw continuous lines, which you don’t even unlock until much later, other types of tiles let you make forks in the road, separate islands, and other neat tricks that turn “impossible” levels into “why didn’t I think of that sooner!” moments. But there’s more. Once you fill in the whole map, two more challenges pop up, raising the difficulty from just finding any solution to each small level, to finding a global solution to the entire world that satisfies all the many requirements! This is brilliant, it definitely earned its place on my wishlist! (my playthrough)
  
  
• 👍 Tool Land (puzzle platformer, puzzle metroidvania): A game clearly inspired by the extraordinary Leap Year, especially its March DLC, with similar mechanics, similar goals, and even a very similar look. Except that instead of gaining knowledge about things you can do, you gain actual tools to help you. Just like in Leap Year, you have a big world to explore one screen at a time, and depending on your jump height, you may die. There are lots of savepoints throughout, and collectibles you have to learn how to reach. Unlike in Leap Year, your progress isn’t knowledge-gated as much as it is tool-gated; you have to reach tools like the drill, the plunger, the rock(et), and the box, but you still have to figure out how to use them. It’s closer to a pure metroidvania than a metroidbrainia, but there’s still plenty to figure out. Not as brilliant as its inspiration, but it’s still a good game. I just wish it had a map. (my playthrough)
  
  
• 👍 Virtual Perspective (maze, perspective illusions, first person): A 3D test-chamber puzzle game about bringing orbs of energy to targets by dragging them across walls. You point the crosshair at an orb, click to grab it, and carefully guide it to a target. There are pink lines on the walls and floors, and if the orb touches one, it resets back to the start. At first, it’s just a simple 3D maze, but the trick is that you can move the orb between surfaces whenever your view moves between walls, since the orb always stays in the middle of the screen. So another aspect is finding a path across surfaces, and finding the perspectives from which you can safely jump between walls without touching the deadly pink lines. Then it gets more complicated when there are multiple orbs and targets. Some opening doors or disabling pink lines, so a third challenging aspect is figuring out which orb can get to which target. The demo isn’t too challenging, but I’ve playtested a few more interesting levels. (my playthrough)
  
  
• 👍 ZERO_FILL (logic, math, lights out): Like a Lights Out game, but with more than just on/off states. On a grid of numbers, click a tile to either add or subtract 1 from its value and its neighbors’ value. The goal is to get the entire grid to 0. More: neighbors don't just mean the 4 adjacent tiles, the grid wraps around the edges, and gaps are skipped, so a tile always has 4 neighbors even if they are far away or over the edge on the other side of the grid. And more: numbers are capped in the 3-3.3 range, probably more in the full game, so you can max out an area, which can change the difference/parity between neighbors. And even more: you have a finite number of moves. This is good, a complex mathy challenge. Most of the levels in the demo are nice, with a solve path that feels smooth and rewarding, though towards the end, it did seem like the levels are getting too big and noisy. (my playthrough)

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