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What are your favorite casual puzzle games?
Hi! I'm looking for some fun and interesting casual puzzle games. Some of my favorites, in no particular order, are:
- Sudoku
- Nonogram - like the recent Every 5x5 Nonogram or Picross.
- Tetris - Apotris on GBA is great!
- A few from the Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection
- Sokoban
- Catrap on Gameboy, a bit similar to Sokoban
- Dragonsweeper and Mamono Sweeper that people recommended here a while ago.
- Chip's Challenge - Lexy's Labyrinth is a browser-based reimplementation.
Since you're a fan of nonograms/Picross, you should definitely check out Proverbs and Mosaic of The Pharaoh, IMO. The puzzles are similar to nonograms but using a slightly different ruleset, and rather than lots of little puzzles they're giant ones that you slowly solve portions of over time. The pictures they form are pretty charming/amusing as well.
And looking in my Steam library 'Puzzle' category, here are a few more I can also recommend:
Hex/Square/Crosscells is another pretty good casual puzzle franchise that you might enjoy.
Paint it Back is basically Picross on PC, and pretty good too. IIRC, it was actually @Deimos that recommended it to me way back in the day.
Please, Don’t Touch Anything is reminiscent of those old "Don't push the button" Flash games, but more polished and with tons of different endings to discover.
The Room franchise isn't exactly "casual" since it can get somewhat difficult at times, but it was pretty great.
And ditto for The Witness, Superliminal, and The Talos Principle. They're not exactly casual in terms of gameplay or difficulty level either, especially once you get a bit deeper into them, but they're truly phenomenal games, IMO. Talos Principle 1 & 2 are both currently on sale as well, BTW.
p.s. Opus Magnum might be worth checking out too. It may look casual-esque, but it's just about as far from casual as you can get in terms of its difficulty. However, it's one of the absolute best puzzle games ever made, IMO.
Seconding Proverbs and Mosaic of the Pharaohs, they've eaten up dozens of hours of my free time and are great to chill out to with a podcast or audiobook on in the background.
Talos Principle is a wonderful franchise. TP2 in particular is just a beautiful, beautiful game. It's rare that a puzzle game has such a good story, and in TP2 the dialog options are actually engaging/thoughtful in a way I seldom see. Characters comment if you choose philosophically inconsistent answers, and there was one dialog in particular with Yaqut where not only did you have to make a convincing argument, but the game actually had options for the precise argument that I wanted to make in that scenario. A+ work all around.
I actually haven't played TP2 yet, which is why I only recommended the first one, but your comment has definitely tempted me to finally pick it up while its still on sale, and play it!
You won't regret it! I think the puzzles don't innovate over top of TP1 all that much but they're all neat, especially the DLC puzzles - the DLC is handily worth it but it doesn't impact primary gameplay at all, so it's fine to give it a pass until you know if you're vibing with the game.
My understanding is that among Zachtronics games, Opus Magnum is frequently recommended as a good one to start with because it's one of the easiest to get into! Which says a lot about their games in general lol
I'll agree, it's a pretty difficult puzzle game by normal standards, but you will know quickly if it scratches the right itch, and if it does it is very satisfying to tinker with until you manage to find a solution.
The only other Zachtronics game I've really played is Spacechem, which it's about the same difficulty (and a very similar puzzle type) as Opus Magnum. But yeah, I've looked at all the others too and the majority of them seemed like they would be way too hard for me. E.g. I do actually own TIS-100 as well, but it immediately made my head hurt so I gave up on it pretty quick. ;)
Edit: Oh, nm. I have actually played Infinifactory and MOLEK-SYNTEZ too.
I am still really tempted to try Last Call BBS though, since I watched Cracking The Cryptic play Dungeons & Diagrams, one of its mini-puzzle games, and that looked interesting and not too terribly difficult.
Zachtronics games tend to fall into one of two categories -- the ones that are this kind of... assembly puzzle, for lack of a better term? and the ones that are more coding/computer science-y. In my experience what people typically recommend for beginners is Opus Magnum as the first of this kind, and Exopunks as the first of the more coding-y type. I've really enjoyed both (and will probably move on to more Zachtronics games once I'm done with them) but I can definitely see other people only vibing with one kind or the other.
Hmmm, if that's the case, I might have to give Exopunks a try!
Opus Magnum also has (imo) the best minigame out of all of them. I occasionally crack it back open just to plow through a few mindless rounds of Sigmar's Garden.
I'm so bad at Sigmar's Garden lol
HUGE shout-out to Tametsi on Steam. It's super cheap (I think I got it for $3?) and somewhere between Minesweeper and Nonograms. It's casual in the sense that it's easy to pick up and play, but it is tough as nails.
LFTL (and since I was curious to see it too):
https://store.steampowered.com/app/709920/Tametsi/
Came here to recommend Tametsi. It's deceptively tricky if you're going for the no-errors clears.
Theres a cute little steam game called Take a Seat that's all about about arranging characters various social situations.
Theres also a fun novelty called Save Room which is just Resident Evil 4 inventory management as a full game.
If you like sokoban style games:
Patricks Parabox which is a block pushing pushing game with a twist I won't spoil.
Can of Wormholes and Room to Grow are snake style maze games that I enjoyed a few years back.
I enjoyed the take a seat demo quite a bit :) fun puzzle and cute chill vibe. I especially enjoyed having to accomodate popcorn stealers next fo folks with popcorn
I love nonograms but haven't found any programs that are "good enough" except for Nonogram Katana. I paid for the Google Play version and likely have a thousand or more hours in it, and since I started they've added a whole other level of building a village, adventuring in a dungeon, and the like. That's fun and all, but the nonograms are just awesome in general, and there are thousands of great options as one can submit their own.
If you have a Switch you should definitely check out Picross, if you haven't already. IMO, it's still the king of nonogram games in terms of its level of polish. I've played all of the mainline series starting from the DS/3DS era up to all the latest Switch ones (Picross S9 and S+), as well as most of the branded ones (even from franchises I don't recognize, e.g. Picross Kemono Friends).
The developer of the Picross games for Switch released a non-Picross-branded game for PC last year called Logiart Grimoire. They also made this vtuber-collaboration one this year: Juufuutei Raden's Guide for Pixel Museum.
(mention for @Asinine so they see this as well)
Oh, cool. I didn't realize they also made PC games! Logart's Grimoire looks especially interesting. Wishlisted, and thanks for letting me know about it!
Picross 3D is very good but it's only available for the 3DS as far as I know.
One of the problems I have with Picross is that sometimes the grid is very small and zooming in isn't handled very well. That isn't a problem with Picross 3D.
I've been playing this through RetroArch (using the melonDS core) on my phone. It's great, and works very nicely with a touchscreen.
I do not. Just the PC and I prefer Steam games, which complements my Deck.
pssst ;)
Wait, guessing yuzu is a Switch emulator for the Deck? I never managed to actually propagate emulators (had a ton installed but never bothered much past getting them to work)... but now I'm curious
Yup, it's supposedly the best Switch emulator for the Steam Deck at the moment.
p.s. I can't actually vouch for it myself yet though, since I've never actually installed it. I don't have a Deck yet, but I have had that (and a few other emulator guides) bookmarked for when I inevitably do get one... or a Deck 2 if/when that finally gets announced and released.
cc: @kfwyre have you played around with emulation on your Deck yet? If so have you tried any of the Switch ones yet?
Gotcha. Thing is, I have a ton of games I wanna emulate from the NES, PSX, and that era, but... here I am, after downloading many emulators and even having the properly owned ROMs (for PSX that I ripped myself)... heh.
I am curious if kfwyre has any input though! Because, ngl I might look into Deck emulators... probably will end up in the same spot but I might try! (Plus, others may come across this and learn more, which honestly I think would be of more value heh)
Allow me to evangelize RetroDECK.
It turns your Steam Deck into the emulation device of your dreams in the simplest, easiest way possible.1
You install the flatpak from the Discover store in desktop mode, run the configurator once, drop BIOSes and ROMs in the correct folders, and, baby, you got a retro gaming stew going.
RetroDECK sets up an ES-DE frontend for all of your systems where you can browse your games and boot into them. It automatically configures all the emulators for you. It automatically sets up controller profiles for you. It sets up universal hotkeys for emulator actions like save states. It can log you into RetroAchievements for all supported systems automatically. It even sets up a radial menu with a bunch of deeper emulation options for you (like rewinding and whatnot). I cannot stress how easy it is.
I have played hundreds of hours of retro games, all the way from the Colecovision to the PlayStation 2, with minimal setup and maximal "it just works."
Now, I'll qualify this: RetroDECK is only as good as the emulators it includes. It's not going to work any magic tricks for systems with fussy or incomplete emulators.
I personally haven't emulated any Switch games on my Steam Deck, so I can't say how well it works, though plenty of other people have been able to do it decently well. It requires a bit more setup than most though, because you have to do some extra steps for the firmware or encryption or something (not entirely sure since I haven't done it myself).
Additionally, Switch emulation is technically possible through RetroDECK but not ideal. Yuzu got removed from it after Yuzu got, you know, removed from everywhere. It currently includes Ryujinx, but that is considered legacy after development stopped and will be removed from RetroDECK soon. They plan on adding Ryubing, but that hasn't happened yet. So, if you want it exclusively for Switch games, RetroDECK probably isn't the right solution at the moment, but if you're wanting other systems (and it sounds like you do!) then I cannot recommend it enough! I utterly adore it.
1. But wait, isn't that what EmuDeck does?
Well, yes, but also no.
EmuDeck is a script that sets up a bunch of different individual emulators. Each one has its own little life. They update separately. I find this to be a messy way of doing things.
RetroDECK is a single flatpak that contains all the emulators you want. They all live together under one roof. They update together. I find this to be a very clean way of doing things.
I hate that the Deck so heavily depends on flatpaks (well, completely depends on it, that is)... but this intrigues me. Now let's see if I can focus enough to fiddle around with it... :D
Y'all who enjoyed I Am Not A Robot really need to check out Bart Bronte's collection of games, starting with Yellow.
Much less frustrating, mini collection of clever "a-ha!" moments of joy delivered one after another
https://www.bontegames.com/?m=1
Scroll to the bottom on mobile or on the left bar. Or look up Bart Bronte's yellow in app store
I coded two that I enjoy playing myself:
I designed both of them to be as low-stress as possible to the player and as similar to playing with physical game sets where you can "cheat" as much as you want, as possible - single-player games should impose as few actual constraints as possible imo
I've been playing your Set very casually all this time. Thanks for making such a low stress version! No timers, no buzzers, no losing streaks etc. just find a set, maybe two or three, put it down, come back later for more. I need more extremely casual games like this
omg I'm so glad to hear this, that's the nicest review I could possibly get!!! if you have any feature requests ever let me know!! (no guarantees cos I haven't touched it in a couple years now but I'd definitely at least take a look!)
2048!
Hmm. Oooh. Yeah.
I have a soft spot for Professor Layton games. They’ve all been ported to iPad, so it’s easy to play for a few minutes here and there.
I keep going back to Enigmo over the years. Work out how to use various parts to bounce little drops of ink into buckets.
I think someone on here got me in to baba is you. You solve puzzles by making and changing the rules of how objects interact.
Polarium Advance on GBA (better than the also great DS version). One puzzle a day mode is highly recommended! Easy to emulate but there's something about playing on a real GBA Micro/SP. A cheap emulation handheld like Miyoo Mini would also suffice. You press a button and are instantly back in the game—no faff. https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2014/01/01/polarium-advance-daily-puzzle-challenge/
There's also a similar mode in my own Sparrow Solitaire, for Playdate.
MaBoShi (DS), Orbital/Orbient (GBA), and Magical Puzzle Popils (GG) both amazing but perhaps slightly less casual, though no worse than Chips Challenge.
On Apple Arcade, the game Stitch. is worth all the time for casual puzzling. I apologize if it’s not available elsewhere but this game has had me in its clutches for over three years.
I have an extremely old Steam game collection, so some of this stuff is bound not to work on modern PCs anymore, but...
Brain-Off Fun: An Arcade Full of Cats, Dorfromantik, Hidden Folks
Proper Puzzle Games: Cogs, Hitman: GO, Human Resource Machine, Little Inferno, Pictopix, Puzzler World, Quell, Quell: Memento, Quell: Reflect, Voxelgram, World of Goo, Zenbound 2
I do also have a list of 3D games with puzzles at the core of them but where you must control the game with a keyboard and mouse. So far as I recall, every game here is playable with just a mouse.
It's not my entire collection, and I did try to make sure I included my favorite picross/nonogram game in there (Voxelgram, though I have not played the sequel.)
If you don't mind keyboard and mouse, I've got a bunch more games that I can recommend as well.
Related to Chip's Challenge is Chuck's Challenge, from the same developer!
Somebody here turned me onto a guy on Twitch, kilg0re_Tr0ut, who plays a game called Sherlock once every stream. Everett Kaser has a ton of interesting looking games.
Tetris and Puzzle League are go-tos for me as well for endless puzzles that you can just pick up, do for however long, and leave. Flipon is a great Puzzle League clone as well.
Snood
And apparently it still exists
https://www.snoodworld.com/
I haven’t tried anything from that site, I used to play on Windows 95, and later on Gameboy Advance.
Maybe a little too different than what you’re asking but just in case:
If you're on iPhone/iPad then you need to try Bullpen. I can't take credit for it. Someone mentioned it here in a previous thread but it's very compelling!