11 Best Puzzle Games of All Time

Brain-teasers. Headscratchers. Riddles, enigmas, and conundrums. If you want your head to be more than an eyebrow holder, you can pick up a puzzle game and practice using your noggin. There are so many good puzzle games that it’s hard to pick the best.

Thankfully, Metacritic’s got us covered, with an “objective” list of the best puzzle games of all time. Why the sarcasm quotes? Well, you might notice that almost all these games are seventh-gen “casual” titles. The seventh generation was a golden age for casual games and indie games. It was also, regrettably, a dark age for game review scores, because game reviewers held casual games to a lower standard. So while we’re going off the games’ Metascore to get a more objective result, we’re ignoring some of the site’s more… questionable categorization and scoring decisions.

Thanks to both Metacritic scores and our own ability to distinguish between the quality level of titles like Sonic Frontiers and Imagine Party Babyz, we settled on the following list:

World Of Goo

World of Goo has a simple concept: get goggly-eyed balls of Goo to a pipe at the end of the level. You’re given a small structure made of Goo, and can attach more Goo balls to the structure. To get to the pipe, you’ll need to build structures out of your Goo balls– balancing the need to build a stable structure while trying to get as many of them to the end as possible. Bridge gaps, build towers, or descend into a pit, all while dealing with gravity.

Combine the fun gameplay with a darkly comedic, anti-capitalist story, a strong visual theme, and interesting level gimmicks, and you’ve got possibly the best puzzle game of all time. World of Goo is one of the games that kickstarted the indie boom, and it’s not hard to see why– this game has aged like a fine wine.

Lumines

Lumines is a pretty simple game: blocks made up of four squares fall from the sky, and you connect those sections into shapes. The bigger the shape, the more points you score. It’s a bit style-over-substance -–- but my goodness, that style. Every level has its own funky visuals, from dancing straight out of an iPod commercial to psychedelic waveforms reminiscent of Windows Media Player. The music is the best techno that 2006 has to offer, with titles like “Talk 2 You” and “Please Return My CD”.

Anyone who wants a combination of Zen puzzling and Y2Kcore aesthetic can’t go wrong with Lumines.

Meteos

Meteos is a falling block puzzler developed by Masahiro Sakurai -–- yes, that Sakurai -–- where you turn falling meteors into a rocket, blast them into space, and win an interplanetary war! It’s a game of risk and reward -–- the bigger the lines you make, the bigger the meteor you launch. It’s fun, addictive, and the DS’s touchscreen makes the gameplay incredibly intuitive.

Sakurai made an entire video about the game design behind Meteos, and it’s well worth a watch if you want to understand what makes this game tick. Meteos is a hidden gem in the DS library– if you haven’t played it yet, it’s well worth your time.

Armadillo Run

“Armadillo is lost in another dimension. Help it return home by guiding it through a series of interdimensional portals,” states the beginning of this game. And sure enough, that’s exactly what you do, through a series of 50 physics-based puzzles. You build structures out of “links” and “nodes” which obey the laws of physics. A link that is too stressed will break; you have to reinforce your structures with metal platforms and bars.

Armadillo Run is the work of a single indie dev, and it shows. The graphic design is nonexistent, and the puzzles are tough as nails. But what really matters in a game like this is the physics engine, and it delivers -–- the physics are consistent, fluid, easy to learn and hard to master.

All told, this game is a triumph of substance over style. If you like physics-based puzzlers or indie games, this one is well worth your time.

Art of Balance

And now we go from the solo-indie-devviest of unpolished but charming games to the most polished and clean game on this list. But Art of Balance is also charming, in a Zen way.

Art of Balance is another physics puzzler -–- this time you’ve got a platform that’s floating in water, and your mission is to stack blocks on it without anything sinking. As the title implies, keeping things balanced is key; you have to make a stable structure that’s not going to fall over. The game features several modes: there’s an arcade mode where you have a limited number of blocks, a ‘super puzzle’ mode where you have a time limit, and even a co-op mode.

With fluid controls, carefully honed physics, and addictive gameplay, Art of Balance is a game that physics puzzler fans won’t want to miss.

Critter Crunch

Critter Crunch is another indie game that’s got a lot of heart, a lot of charm, and a dark, wry sense of humour. You’re playing as Biggs, an adorable furry little creature with an unending appetite. You shoot smaller creatures at larger creatures to feed them, and then feed the larger creatures to Biggs!

The hand-drawn animation and visual presentation is excellent. The gameplay is fun and addictive, the difficulty curve is pitch-perfect, the selection of modes (including two different multiplayer modes) is broad and intuitive, and the amount of content is impressive – especially when you consider that this was originally a mobile game. Most of all, this game has heart. You can tell everyone who worked on it loved it and wanted it to be as incredible as it deserved. And if that’s not a recommendation, I don’t know what is.

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords combines the gameplay of a Bejeweled clone with RPG mechanics. You’ve got stats, quests, spells, and XP, but instead of doing turn-based traditional RPG battles, you’re doing turn-based match-3 gameplay. To use any of your abilities, you need to match specific shapes, and a longer chain means a more powerful ability. Select one of four professions, which change what stats and abilities you can access over the game, and fight head-to-head battles against monsters and creatures. Earn gold, build up your character’s equipment and Citadel, repeat.

This game was a surprise smash hit, spawning sequels, remasters, and licensed spin-offs by the ton. And it’s not hard to see why -–- it was the right game at the right time. If you like JRPGs from the 2000s or match-3 games, you’ll find a lot to love here.

The Witness

The Witness is a fascinating, mysterious, elliptical game, an homage to games like Myst and a beautiful puzzlebox in its own right. You’re exploring an abandoned island, and solving puzzles to open up more of the world. The puzzles are elegant -–- you need to connect a series of dots with a single line. Each puzzle builds on these same straightforward rules. While the early puzzles are simple and clean, the later puzzles get fiendishly complex, with one reviewer taking 8 hours to solve a late-game puzzle.

The thing that will make or break your enjoyment of The Witness is whether you enjoy figuring out the rules of the game as you go. If you’re the kind of person who looks up walkthroughs before every puzzle, you’ll probably find it a bit repetitive, or even boring. If you’re the kind of person who enjoys those Eureka moments when everything clicks? Uncovering both the puzzles and the story of the island will be incredibly rewarding.

Planet Puzzle League

Intelligent Systems is one of Nintendo’s best second-party dev teams. Fire Emblem… Panel de Pon… Tetris Attack… anything they touch turns to gold. And Planet Puzzle League is no exception.

In the Puzzle League games, you’re given a series of coloured shapes that rise up from the bottom of the playing field. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to line up and swap these blocks to create matches, with, as usual, more points for a bigger and better match. It’s a simple, addictive, arcade-style game, and it’s executed flawlessly here. The DS’s “book-style” mode is used to create a game that feels fantastic with a touch screen and stylus. The game features enough modes to keep you coming back for more for a long, long time: single-player campaigns, Vs. Computer mode, multiplayer modes, and a “Daily Mode” that gives you a new challenge every day and charts your score over time.

If you like arcade-style puzzle games, this is a must-have. IntSys always knocks it out of the park, and Planet Puzzle League is no exception.

Professor Layton and the Unwound Future

Tired of falling, rising, switching, or rocketing blocks? Let’s take a tea break with Professor Layton.

This series of adventure games is beloved for its puzzle-solving action and quirky mystery stories. And Unwound Future, as the third game in the original trilogy, is a perfect send-off to the series. The stakes are high; the top hats are higher. Professor Layton’s apprentice, Luke, receives a strange letter claiming to be from his future self. When the duo goes to investigate, they run into a time machine accident -–- and the story gets wilder from there.

As for the puzzles, they’re more “brain-teaser” than anything else. You have logic puzzles, math puzzles, visual puzzles (including a charming one where you have to arrange pentominoes into the shape of Layton’s hat), and a few mini-games to round the whole thing off. All of the puzzles have hints provided, which you can buy with collectable Hint Coins; returning players complained that some of the puzzles felt repetitive, but overall enjoyed the experience.

If you like adventure games, brainteasers, or slower-paced puzzles, give Professor Layton a try– it’s one of the most beloved DS series, and it recently got a mobile port.

Tetris Party

The OG, the classic, the undefeated: Tetris. So many of the games on this list draw from Tetris in one way or another; so many more games owe their existence to it. It’s a simple, elegant game. Tetrominoes fall; you stack them to make lines. Make more lines, the game gets faster.

Why is Tetris Party the best-rated Tetris game of all time? Well, some of it is that it’s a multiplayer casual game on the Wii, but some of it is the sheer breadth of its gameplay. Tetris Party has classic single-player Tetris mode. But there are also ten new modes, including one where you climb up the stage, one where you guide a single tetromino through an endless passageway, and one where you use the Wii Balance Board. In addition, it’s got both local and online multiplayer, supporting up to six players.

It’s clear the team at HudsonSoft threw everything they had at Tetris Party, and it’s probably the most Tetris you can get for your buck. If you want to play Tetris head to head with friends, or if you want to experience the funky alternate modes, check out Tetris Party.

There you have it: the 11 best (or at least 11 of the best) puzzle games of all time. Do you agree with our picks? Think Peggle is a puzzle game? Drop us a comment below. Thanks for reading, and have a great day!