Blackshift
I’ve played a lot of puzzle games before, but it’s been a very long time since I’ve been this enthralled by one! There are so many interesting puzzle elements that are introduced completely organically, allowing you to understand them without the use of an explicit tutorial and, instead, through experimentation. New elements are presented even late into the game, which always made me excited to see what would lie in each new area.
The exploration is also fantastic, with secrets hidden in tricky to reach areas that give puzzles an extra layer of depth and make hunting around every nook and cranny feel properly rewarding. The amazing, outside-of-the-box solutions to some of the secrets were mind blowing and always felt amazing to figure out!
– Real player with 324.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Grid-Based Movement Puzzle Games.
On September 22nd, 2020 the game Chip’s Challenge became free on Steam. In Chip’s Challenge you control a character on a tile grid and solve a series of puzzles around moving blocks, opening doors, using tools, avoiding enemies, etc. to reach an end. Here’s the thing, Chip’s Challenge is now thirty years old and shows its age. Puzzle design that seemed engaging and exciting to me in 1995 is now tedious and dull. The joy has worn off.
On September 22nd, 2020 the game Blackshift published on Steam. Blackshift is Chip’s Challenge if it were, well, still good. The base description of the mechanics are the same (ok, you blow up a thing instead of finding an exit) but the “etc.” above keeps on going and going. Even as far as the 98th level new ideas are being added. Puzzles are often creative and surprising. Sure, across 100 levels not all are going to be winners, but by and large figuring out a level is a joy. Every time you beat one you just have to peek at the next one to see what it has to offer. And then you’re there and you just have to give it a try. Then suddenly it’s hours later than when you wanted to stop playing.
– Real player with 38.0 hrs in game
Worm Jazz
A fun and clever little puzzle game that requires thinking ahead before each move. Really like the undo enabling backtracking for those times you take a wrong turn, very intuitive keyboard and mouse assignment as well. Lovely little gem, highly recommended!
– Real player with 15.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Grid-Based Movement Puzzle Games.
Got from IsThereAnyDeal 10 year anniversary giveaway, and love it!
Love the graphics and game play. Puzzles start off easy and ramp up well.
Thoroughly recommend this to anyone into Puzzle games!
Enjoying it so much I recommended it to my partner, and she bought it immediately!
– Real player with 10.4 hrs in game
Guards of the Gate
I am definitely having fun with this game, so I can recommend it. I didn’t really like it at first, but as I experimented with the different team combinations and learned more about the game play, I really started to get into it.
This isn’t a fancy game. You create a team of three characters. Mutant, Knight, Ninja, Ranger, Wizard, and Shaman. You navigate a world map by moving from spot to spot. Each spot is either empty, has a battle grid with monsters, has a reward statute, has a merchant, has a new skill, etc. The maps aren’t that big.
– Real player with 22.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Grid-Based Movement Singleplayer Games.
I like turn-based tactic games, and I am hardcore gamer who dedicated many hours to the XCOM series. However, sometimes I turn to obviously more simple games, like Guards of the Gate.
Pros:
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Nice look, for the game of that kind quite fair;
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Interesting map system without out-of-battle healing and statues which strengthen teams in next runs;
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Some skills that I have not encountered in other games of this type;
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Simple but enjoyable battle system on small hexagonal fields.
Cons:
- The game is very badly balanced, for now. Some classes are more useful than others; teams of certain type make walkthrough very easy, and others - very hard, but irritating hard, because of bad skills combination and artificial weaknesses. This is very important, because for turn-based tactic game to be replayable it must have various strategies and approaches. Now there is only one effective approach.
– Real player with 19.8 hrs in game
SlideNSlip
SlideNSlip is a challenging and addictive (but simple) puzzle game. Move Mac and the penguins around, and guide Mac to the jet ski in the center of the level.
Rules
1. Click on Mac or a Penguin to select him/it.
2. The selected character can then be moved horizontally or vertically, as long as the move is valid.
3. A move is only valid if there is something for the moving character to slide into (i.e. Mac or a Penguin).
4. Once a character has started moving, he will continue until he slides into another character.
5. Watch the trailer to get a good idea of what the gameplay is like.
Features
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Over 65 unique levels ranging in difficulty from mindlessly easy to break-your-computer-screen difficult
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10 super awesome background songs written by cubic lights
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An undo button, allowing you to undo your previous move in case you need to go back
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6 different save files, so lots of people can enjoy the game
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TONS of penguins
P.S. No penguins were harmed in the making of this game.
Get Ogre It
cute aesthetics, cool music and great gameplay that makes it kind of a puzzle game, also has great value for its price.
i liked it a lot and recommend anyone to try it
– Real player with 10.7 hrs in game
Challenging roguelike with a non combat twist. Always had to stay focused or i’ll get stabbed
– Real player with 3.4 hrs in game
86
I’ve only played a small amount of “86,” but have really enjoyed it thus far. It’s a challenging puzzler that only relies on symbols and iconography to teach the player the rules of any given challenge. The cartoon art style is effective at translating all information required for the player to solve the puzzles. The strict time limit adds a nice sense of urgency, and the addition of a “notepad” in the game hearkens back to the days of PC gaming where game booklets and manuals had pages of empty space for the player to write down learned knowledge. The $5.00 price tag is more than reasonable for this type of game (I’m reminded of “Frog Detective,” in that sense). I’m looking forward to playing more.
– Real player with 1.3 hrs in game
Memory Maze
nice little fun game, just try it its free. 10 - 15 hours to hundo (good memorization skills required).
– Real player with 5.6 hrs in game
Initially my review was negative because of my uncertainty regarding letter collection and RNG.
But I return to offer an update.
~
Movement precision, memory, powerups, pressure!
Make sure to use WASD and ARROW KEYS together to go faster.
Happy the dev listens.
– Real player with 3.4 hrs in game
Sketchbots
It’s a great concept for a game and it’s executed on very well here; I really want to like this game, I really do. However, there are just a couple of complaints that I want addressed.
1. There’s no way to detect the orientation of other bots.
2. There’s no way to store learned information, the bot can’t create a mental map of the environment or do anything else that would require knowing more then what we just did 1 turn ago.
– Real player with 3.6 hrs in game
I really enjoy this game! I like the challenge of only being able to recall the last action instead of storing all previous actions to memory, it makes me feel like the bots are very primitive, in a good kind of way. The potential here is really huge, I could see hundreds of puzzles to play from the community one day being a thing. Speed running, do it in X challenges etc. This game deserves more love and attention!
– Real player with 3.3 hrs in game
Maze Mayhem
ARE you burnt out on massive games that requires hours upon days to finish, let alone complete?
DO you find yourself enjoying simple, yet deceptively challenging games?
IS a third question even required at this point? Because all the answers are conveniently the same!
Welcome to my game, Maze Mayhem! This game is jam-packed with 50 levels full of variety. From puzzle solving, to dodging enemies, to avoiding spikes, to dancing around fire, to enemies dancing around you, and plenty of mazes to navigate. Trust and believe me when I say that you are sure to find something new around every level. And with levels being about a few minutes long to finish (assuming everything goes fine), it’s an easy game to play for a few minutes. . .Or maybe even a few hours, who knows.
Changes
Got this game the first week it was out, and I’m really enjoying it so far!
If I had to describe it succinctly, I would say “challenging and relaxing at the same time”, which is difficult to pull off!
The music combined with the surreal visuals give it a serene and engrossing quality, yet the puzzles are very challenging so it feels really satisfying to solve them! This game is good for being able to just block out the outside world and get lost in this colony of living cells and solving the puzzles to set everything right!
– Real player with 2.9 hrs in game
disclosure: i did some pre-release playtesting on this game, and i know the developers personally
i should note that i haven’t finished this game at time of review (there’s lots more here than what i’ve played), but i want to call some attention to this game as it could really use more eyes
as the description states, the game is inspired by Conway’s Game of Life, something i wasn’t familiar with before being introduced to this game, and introducing a player piece to that system produces a lot of curious results. solving puzzles inside of these rules creates a kind of science, where the player learns to use specific techniques for movement, destruction, and creation to solve the problem. it feels like trying to control chaos, and even the smallest mistake can often result in your attempt literally blowing up in front of you
– Real player with 2.5 hrs in game