Patterna
An enjoyable puzzle game, Patterna kept my attention for dozens and dozens of hours. You need to determine which cells are or are not marked as part of ‘the pattern’ based on given distribution/adjacency information, somewhat akin to Minesweeper or Hexcells. Like the latter of those, all puzzles are set up in a way that you never strictly need to make a random guess.
The thing that’s really singular about Patterna in my view is the robustness of the random level generator. I was able to find settings that generated interesting random puzzles more often than not. The only issue is that sometimes the chain of reasoning was difficult enough that I needed to break out pen and paper and brute force the next move, which generally felt more like bookkeeping than entertainment. On the whole, though, the game did a good job of hitting a reasonable middle ground of difficulty.
– Real player with 97.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Difficult Logic Games.
In short: Patterna is a challenging hard-logic puzzle game with a steep learning curve. The mechanics are varied and the replayability infinite, but it is very rough around the edges with poor and sometimes frustrating implementation. If you have a low tolerance for bad UI, stay away. If you can stomach that and are a seasoned veteran of logic games, Patterna is well worth buying at full price.
In long: The developer himself compares Patterna’s mechanics to Hexcells, and one can immediately see the inspiration. But Patterna is far from a knock-off, does its own thing and expands gameplay well beyond the scope of Hexcells. Nodes may be revealed or not, may be part of a pattern or not, may carry information about nodes around them up to a distance of 3, may describe the length of the chain they are part of, may have up to 4 colors, may be unlinked, linked or directionally linked, etc. The complexity is smart and truly awe-inspiring, but comes at a cost:
– Real player with 74.7 hrs in game
ADVERSE
Well the day has finally come, launch day! I’ve been helping out playtesting this game for a while now and It’s great to see how far it has come since the very first day I got my hands on it.
The game has quite a lot of levels, that being 40 levels across 8 worlds. The later worlds are usually longer and pretty tough mind you! So it’s welcoming to have a sort of challenge that gets progressively harder as you get further into the game. Furthermore the worlds has a very neat addition of interconnection between them. At the last level of the Pure world, you will start seeing trees and woodlands, leading up to the next Woodlands world. And the same for the end of Woodlands where you see a castle in the distance, etc. It’s a tiny thing but it really enhances the game experience!
– Real player with 20.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Difficult Atmospheric Games.
Challenging! I love challenging.
This game is just what I’ve been looking for. A game to practise your skill at platforming and shooting targets that are NOT other life forms.
The controls seem to work well and I appreciate, as always, the option to change the key bindings for individual preference.
While you do get a better score for being fast, there’s nothing stopping you working your way through each level at your own pace. This makes it a more relaxing experience if that’s how you’d rather play. Though it can still be frustrating when you keep falling off, until you get good at it. Practise and patience makes perfect.
– Real player with 9.3 hrs in game
A Way Back
Clean the islands from nasty plastic by solving challenging puzzles and help a little penguin finding A Way Back home!
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Cute hand-drawn art by Jenya “lodfu” Kuzmenko
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Challenging puzzles by Timur “haze” Chanturia
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A lovely original soundtrack by Tom “TKIMUSE” Kinsella
Read More: Best Difficult Puzzle Games.
Among Stars and Robots
I liked it.
– Real player with 5.6 hrs in game
Coloree
Coloree is a relaxing puzzle game with a very familiar mechanic that I have never seen in a puzzle game before: left-click and drag a box to change the color of everything in the box. The puzzles are increasingly challenging but the aesthetics and the sounds keep the relaxing theme going the whole time.
The reason that the mechanic is familiar is because it’s what we do in an operating system or a game when we want to select multiple things- brilliant! However, this game requires some novel thought processes when thinking about strategies to solve puzzles and it’s easy to get lost in the gameplay. The music and sounds are mostly from a marimba (Google it- it’s a giant xylophone), which plays a big part in setting the ambiance.
– Real player with 4.2 hrs in game
This game is AWESOME!
I played this game for about 30 minutes and its so fun.
I realy recomend this game!
– Real player with 1.3 hrs in game
Cosmic Express
If this game appeals to you, chances are you’ll like it. It’s a delightful puzzle game. I like games like Divide by Sheep and Dungeon Warfare, and this scratches a similar itch.
WARNING: The puzzles are not unlocked in order of difficulty. You’ll have easy puzzles and impossible ones right next to each other as if they’re on the same level. This can be disheartening if you get stuck because you feel like the puzzles are only going to get harder and that’s not the case.
My suggestion is to forget about any particular puzzle that’s pissing you off and move on. Don’t spend hours on one puzzle or you’ll start getting upset with the game. For example, Andromeda 14 is one of the earlier puzzles that gets unlocked, so it seems like you should be able to beat it in the beginning. IT IS THE HARDEST PUZZLE! At least it was for me and lots of other people online (which I found out when I looked up the solution; something that killed me inside but I had to move on with my life because I was having dreams about that damn level).
– Real player with 160.9 hrs in game
I think I have to give a thumbs down (Though itd probably be a neutral), because of some of the later levels.
Id get stuck on them for hours, I tried literally thousands of paths, worked on the logic of which routes could or could not work, and finally had to get an answer to the level in the game I simply couldnt do.
So I guess Im doing this out of spite? Well, I thought about that, but I dont think so. I believe its because ultimately there was no trick. There was nothing special going on, no deeper logic I was missing, I looked at the solution I put in and there was nothing at all in there that gave me any idea of what Id been missing for all that time, it was just a raw path finding task which is inherently tough to complete if you cant just pluck it out.
– Real player with 100.6 hrs in game
Matrix Brain Twister
Are you looking for a Challenge?
I mean a real, REAL Challenge?
Then you should have a look at MATRIX BRAIN TWISTER.
Believe me, here is the Name Programm!
Your Brain WILL twister.
Well, i played so many Games all over the Years, and i have had many challenging Puzzle Games, but THIS, this is really REALLY amazing.
So what do we have here?
At first we have a Cube.
Yes, a simple Cube.
This Cube looks like the Legendary RUBIK CUBE. The One with the 6 Colours and the 54 Squares, remember?
No, no, you don’t have to turn Rows to get one Colour on each side, no, you just have to …click!
– Real player with 8.0 hrs in game
Information / Review English
Matrix Brain Twister is a Brain / Puzzle game that was developed by Clever AI and is still in the development Phase.
Gameplay / Story
You always wanted to play a puzzle game where you had to work your memory? Then this game could be just the thing for you. Your task is that you have to solve different shapes, cubes or figures in the game. The game principle is kept simple, but well implemented. You probably still know the magic cubes from earlier times to spin? This could be compared to getting the same colors on one side. The puzzles are getting harder and harder and I have to say, frustration quickly arises when you are stuck on a figure for ages and cannot solve it. But there are definitely some of you who love that and are looking for a challenge. A ranking system has made it into the game and chooses the right way to solve the various forms.
– Real player with 5.5 hrs in game
NUMTATE
december 2021 edit: the 2.0 update revamped the whole game, so I edited the review to reflect the changes.
numtate is a portmanteau of number and rotate, and sure enough, it’s about rotating numbers so they add up to the one in the middle, called a core. luckily, not much math skill is required, as the core keeps track of the current situation, no need to constantly count what’s around. the core number is the minimum, not the exact goal, though most of the time you won’t have the luxury of going over.
– Real player with 5.2 hrs in game
Truzzle
Great Game
– Real player with 30.3 hrs in game
A ghost, while listening to his favorite song in purgatory, decides to invent a new game to pass the time. A fan of bowling and golf, he decides to combine the two with wheels and portal technology to pass an eternity. He plays 80 levels alone while the haunting, static-y tune plays out forever.
The Good:
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When I first started the game, I feared it wouldn’t be very challenging; however, the game boards and gimmicks actually kept it from being too easy.
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The gimmicks: rotating arrows, static arrows, fixed blocks, portals, and sliding blocks.
– Real player with 6.9 hrs in game
Voxelgram
Voxelgram is a three dimensional Picross/nonogram puzzle game, where solving puzzles in 3D adds a layer of complexity and difficulty, but also a sense of satisfaction.
Unfortunately, there’s a steep learning curve to figuring out puzzles in 3D, especially if you’re accustomed to solving puzzles in 2D, and the tutorial puzzles do a very poor job of teaching the player. Once you get over that hump, however, the game quickly becomes engrossing and addictive.
PROS:
- Colorful and varied puzzles.
– Real player with 746.0 hrs in game
Achievements: Pretty straightforward and easy. There’s no time limits or penalties for mistakes, you just need to complete puzzles.
Voxelgram is incredibly reminiscent of a game back on the Nintendo DS called “Picross 3D”. I enjoyed that game immensely and I was really excited to see a similar game crop up on Steam. It’s a fun take on the usual picross format wherein the player essentially sculpts objects by removing pieces based on the hints marked on the sides. That is to say, where a normal picross game would have the player reveal 2D images, Voxelgram has the player reveal 3D objects. This makes it even more fun to see the puzzle come together.
– Real player with 237.9 hrs in game