Gra & Vity
Really cute and challenging, the reverse square had me brain cramps
– Real player with 4.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Puzzle Minimalist Games.
Nice puzzles… some of them are really challenging.
– Real player with 1.3 hrs in game
Manifold Garden
I have been waiting for this game for a long time and when it finally landed on Steam a year late, it was a day 1 buy in no questions asked. I finished it in a couple of days and it was worth every penny. I played this one off the back of finishing Antichamber and it might just be the perfect comedown game to that, The Witness, Portal or The Talos Principle. That hollow feeling I get when I say goodbye to an awesome game was nicely filled in by Manifold Garden and I’m here to tell you why.
PROS
– Real player with 26.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Puzzle Surreal Games.
It’s a great game. Fun and satisfying puzzles, interesting mechanics and themes, and fantastic visuals. For me, the first playthrough was just right in gameplay and difficulty - some thinkers, but nothing that stumped me for too long. A very enjoyable experience. One minor criticism is that it’s very linear, whereas I was expecting something more in the vein of Space Hole.
[Spoilers may follow, I’m making this a mini-guide to secret content.]
However, if you only play it once to the ending, you’re missing out on a significant portion of the game (including a second ending). And yet the game barely even prods you in that direction. I only knew to look because of the achievements and a couple things I noticed in my playthrough (not that I had any recollection of where they were once I was done). You have to really, really be looking and scour every nook to find the path through the second playthrough. I almost felt like I needed a map of the whole game - and I have no idea what that would look like, given the nature of the physics. Compared to the relative ease of the primary path, it’s a big change. I personally did not want to spend the dozens of hours on it, so I used guides when I wasn’t sure where to go next. The guide on Steam is too vague, so I recommend the video by Lilith LeBlanc.
– Real player with 17.6 hrs in game
Cardinal Chains
This is a fantastic little puzzle game that offers a simple premise but a lot of depth. Your goal is simple, make chains of integers that only ascend. While this is simple at first, the more complex the board and the more starting points you get make for an increasingly difficult challenge, and with over 500 puzzles you will be at this game for a while. It’s the sort of game you get suck on for hours and then come back to a few days later and solve in a few minutes, and then get stuck all over again.
– Real player with 25.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Puzzle Minimalist Games.
Suitable challenging puzzles, super fluid UI.
– Real player with 18.4 hrs in game
English Country Tune
This is an excellent puzzle game. It’s very challenging at times but it’s also very well paced. In the 17 worlds (with plenty of levels in each) a new mechanic is introduced, or a few of the older ones are combined so it’s tough to get tired of the same old puzzles, because there’s always something new to try. The soft, colorful visuals and the ambient music make it pretty relaxing too, if you just want to fiddle around a bit.
I’ve honestly never fallen in love with a game quite so quickly, especially having never heard anything about it before it was gifted to me one year. As a player, you’re afforded so many opportunities for those wonderful “aha!” moments. So many chances to think hard inside (and outside) the game and its logic to figure out the best way to use the varied mechanics in solving puzzles in occasionally surprising ways. The level of ingenuity and creativity offered here instantly skyrocketed this unknown, oddly titled gem, to my number one favorite game of all time.
– Real player with 27.1 hrs in game
Designing a good puzzle game is difficult. In too many entries in this genre, you will get either a very limited set of rule that does not allow for creative puzzles or so many new rules along the way that none feel properly explored in their puzzle design potential. You will often get totally trivial levels at first that rapidly evolve into extraordinarily difficult puzzles or extraordinarily tedious ones. The brilliance of Increpare’s English Country Tune is that it finds almost the perfect balance and avoid all of these pitfalls to offer constant challenge and clever use of its mechanisms.
– Real player with 13.8 hrs in game
ETHEREAL
ETHEREAL is a beautiful puzzle game where you have to move through an abstract maze of colorful geometrical shapes. The challenge is to get through the maze to collect all colored pairs of dots. All puzzles are carefully designed and it was great fun to solve each level. I recommend using a controller, not the keyboard.
My only gripe with the game is that although it introduces new game mechanics one by one, it was on several occasions completely unclear to me what the new mechanic was and I only stumbled upon the new mechanic by accident after much trial and error. Perhaps finding this out the hard way out is supposed to be part of the fun of solving the puzzles, but I would have appreciated it if each new mechanic was introduced in a clear manner at the start of each level, or alternatively if there was an optional introductory tutorial level. However, I still wholeheartedly recommend ETHERAL to anyone who likes puzzle games.
– Real player with 10.0 hrs in game
ETHEREAL 是一款极简风格的解谜游戏，颇具创意。听说是两个人的小作坊做出来的，也太强了叭，wsl。虽然目前可能关卡少了一点，但是依然非常推荐。
游戏简介
游戏的画面和操作都很简洁，虽然我刚开始玩的时候有点懵，因为完全没有任何说明或者提示，不过应该很容易摸索。玩家控制一个属螃蟹的只能水平移动的球，地图中横向的矩形条可以作为桥梁让球上下穿过，通过完成谜题，可以进入一个又一个不同的世界。
优秀的谜题和意境营造
如前面所说，游戏内的操作实际上是相当简单的，你只需要方向键和空格即可，但是每个关卡谜题的设计十分吸引人，不如说能够用这样简单的游戏方式创造出一个这样惊艳的谜题世界实属不易。关卡逐渐深入的过程中，还会有一些全新的具有特殊功能的区块出现，让简单的操作更加灵活多变，既增加了谜题的难度，又让人感到乐趣丛生。作为一个解谜游戏，它的加分项也不显逊色，无论是音效、气氛营造，还是美学设计，都堪称优秀，总而言之这是一款不可多得的优秀解谜游戏。
瑕疵
游戏才刚出不久，有一些问题难免。我觉得，现阶段主要的不足主要是以下两点。第一点就是关卡数偏少，可能需要后续的更新；第二点就是游戏中地图外有secret，我认为这是很好的设定，不过现在找到secret之后似乎并没有什么特殊的反应，就只有一个过场动画。
– Real player with 9.9 hrs in game
Fake Illusions
Amazing game to train your eyes. Some of the illusions gave me a really hard time.
– Real player with 3.3 hrs in game
are those illusion books actually lying to you
– Real player with 3.1 hrs in game
Frame Of Reference
I wasn’t sure what to think when I purchased this game, but I like puzzles, it sounded intriguing, and it was on sale, so I figured “Why not?”. The concept is one I hadn’t seen before, and while there are quirks with it, it works well. At first, I was put off by the small platforms and what seemed to be the overall method of solving the puzzles, but as I played more and learned how to use that methodology, I enjoyed it more. In the end, I found it very enjoyable and definitely recommend it.
About a week after I purchased this game, it transferred ownership to Walsh Technologies Corp, and the store page now says “Walsh Technologies has recently acquired this game. Updates and a roadmap will be coming soon”. I’m not sure what that means for the game, but when I played the game, the overall play time was roughly 1.5 to 2 hours (I’m not sure how many levels/tests there were because they aren’t numbered). My recorded time is much longer because I spent quite a while restarting the game, testing, taking notes, and creating a discussion thread while the game was still open.
– Real player with 4.6 hrs in game
This is a neat little puzzle game. This is an indie title, and it shows, but the content that it does have is original and well thought. The puzzle sequences reminded me of Portal, if portal had more interaction with the companion cubes lol.
It definitely has potential to become something much more if some of the visual and audio flaws are ironed out - simple fixes like say, a better skybox, or disabling the voiceover from restarting every time you reset a simulation would help a lot.
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
Higgs Boson: Minimal Puzzle
In this game there is something very profound, which is the effort to close a cycle and create a meeting!
A short game with intriguing mechanics I had a good experience that was worth it
– Real player with 1.1 hrs in game
Short, minimalistic and relaxing game. From level 28 onwards, the game got really interesting and challenging. Too bad, that there are only 30 levels. Would have been nice if there were more levels with increasing difficulty. A challenge mode with a limited amount of turns would be nice as well.
– Real player with 0.7 hrs in game
Impresja
Works also on Linux if you install Steam for Windows on Wine.
“Simply” Outstanding. This Game defines the term “computer game”. A non violent adventure in unique surroundings. Excellent atmosphere and design. I didn’t read too many reviews about it, wanting to experience the game on my own, and it really is worth it. Very calming and entertaining, as one tries to get anywhere really, but it’s not that easy😉😍🤩💖
– Real player with 18.4 hrs in game
I feel on the fence about this game. In the end, i can’t say i recommend this game. here is why :
movement speed = way too slow. many of the puzzles have you running from point A to B over and over. even figuring out what to do was made tedious by what became the slow casual walk.
if there was an option to make the move speed much faster the game would have been much better.
the level design and pace was all over the place.
almost as if the scaling for how hard the puzzles should be was out of order.
– Real player with 6.1 hrs in game
Induction
Induction is a mind bending puzzle game involving time travel, cooperation with instances of yourself accross timelines, causality and paradoxes. If you like abstract puzzle games and/or the movie Primer, you’ll probably love this game!
Induction is all about puzzles, no plot or action. Even the visual style is simple so as to not distract from the necessary information needed to solve this puzzle. This is necessary, since the puzzles are mind warping and demand a lot of mental faculty to comprehend.
– Real player with 14.6 hrs in game
### Great game!
A brilliant puzzle game that takes the concept of time travel puzzles and takes them a step further. With components that seemingly start off as the past and future influencing each other in several ways, but simply going back in time and changing one thing is only the surface of this game, it goes much deeper later on with mind breaking puzzles, the types of puzzles are extremely diverse and interesting to the point that they could ‘almost’ be separate games.
– Real player with 13.4 hrs in game