Best Puzzle Platformer Visual Novel Games on PC

The House Before

You wake up as a house.

Your limbs stretch through endless rooms filled with grotesque creatures. You can never see outside of yourself, never feel the world that lies beyond the fleshy walls of your body.

You manage your insides as best as you can, but you wonder : are you a good house or just a pale afterthought of the House Before ?

–—————

The House Before is a blend between a visual novel and an adventure game with some dungeon crawler and 3d platformer elements.

The game is mostly a narrative experience with light puzzles.

Explore your guts.

Heal old wounds.

Be a good house.

Remember who you used to be.

Raise your children.

Procreate.

Be better than the House Before.

Read More: Best Puzzle Platformer 3D Games.

The House Before on Steam

Evan’s Remains

Even’s Remains isn’t bad as a game. It’s a puzzle platformer, and while it’s not the best around, it gets the job done. The puzzles are well designed without being too frustrating, and they can be fun. The graphics are probably the best part, dripping in pixelated goodness, and the music is relaxing and fits what the game is going for. So all that’s good.

What breaks the game is the story.

On the surface, it’s about a young woman named Dysis hired to find a boy named Emil on a deserted island, home to some ruins from an ancient civilization. You find a dude named Clover there, who’s trying to discover the ruins' secret and save his little sister from a hereditary disease. Simple enough, right?

– Real player with 5.1 hrs in game

Read More: Best Puzzle Platformer Casual Games.

(review code provided by Whitethorn Digital)

I first saw Evan’s Remains during its Kickstarter campaign and followed it as it was picked up by its publisher (Whitethorn Digital). looked great the whole way, so I applied for a review code. here are my honest first impressions after ~2 hours and 20 minutes of gameplay:

gorgeous pixel art, with stunning environments and character designs.
majestic chiptunes soundtrack that’s worth picking up, methinks.
cerebral yet fair puzzles, which allow those that have troubles with them the option of skipping them by going to the menu. so it’s very accessible, though I personally haven’t yearned to skip any of the puzzles yet (I don’t think I will skip any of them until after I’ve beaten the game once; I do want to review this comprehensively rather than phoning it in, since I WAS given a free code and it’d be feel slimy to not bleed a bit of ink talking about how I feel about it) and none of them have taken me 15 minutes yet (since the game gives an achievement for taking 15 minutes on a single puzzle and I haven’t gotten that yet, lol). and I’m not super into puzzle games aside from Baba Is You and some other light puzzle/platformers besides ER, like GRIS and Mekabolt. so that should give an idea of how difficult they are. as far as I’ve gotten, it doesn’t take long to survey the puzzles and figure out what you need to do, and once you solve the puzzles it is very satisfying.

– Real player with 4.5 hrs in game

Evan's Remains on Steam

Power Of Language

Power Of Language is a suspense text game mainly featuring dialogues. The game is about a case caused by a certain mental illness in the future, and you’d act as a hypnotist to talk to prisoners for investigations that eventually lead to the truth. Besides, you need to be careful of every tiny clue contained in memory scenes. The plot lasts for 40 to 60 minutes.

. A dialogue-based game.

. It’s about a case caused by a certain mental illness.

. You’d investigate an unbelievable case to figure out the truth through dialogues and memory scenes.

Read More: Best Puzzle Platformer Singleplayer Games.

Power Of Language on Steam

Bermuda

While I liked Unhack, Bermuda has nothing from what made Bermuda good, while it’s similarly short, ~ 1h.

Long story short: main character, friend and friend’s girlfriend get abducted by “aliens”, they teleport the girl home, and the guys want to get away + know more about the strangers.

The characters are basically archetypes, or if you don’t want to phrase so lightly, clichés.

The friend, who can be told from first glance that he’s a badboy type of a character - prison backstory, aggressive take on strangers, the usual.

– Real player with 9.5 hrs in game

Tags: Adventure - VN - Visual Novel

Additional Tags: Delete Local Content & Remove from Library

TLDR: Amateur all-around. Sidescroll tactical stealth object routing visual novel with immersion breaking alien sci fi plot.

Game is not fullscreening correctly, the voice acting seems homebrewed. The art has a deviantart quality to it. Still you can tell that this is a project that was not a botched job and someone actually tried their hand at doing something decent.

There is in fact an intro that is animated, an initial plot hook, some meandering dialogue and the repetitive stealth game is functional.

– Real player with 3.5 hrs in game

Bermuda on Steam

Escape Room VR: Inner Voices

I highly recommend it if you are a fan of scary or puzzle VR games. Music and voic-overs make the game very atmospheric so I had gooseflesh ;)

– Real player with 11.3 hrs in game

The game has a thick atmosphere and great storyline. Must have for horror fans (in games/movies/literature), but it is highly recommended for the people looking for an exciting and engaging plot. Visions that appear in the thin air make a great immersive impression. Almost from the start, we are in the game, the stakes are high, and we want to know what will happen next in John’s - OUR’S - story. It’s an escape room game but with broader experience.

The level design combines known, effective narrative tricks with unexpected design elements (RANDOMIZED LABIRYNTH!). It’s a good thrill, especially for Stephen King’s admirers.

– Real player with 3.0 hrs in game

Escape Room VR: Inner Voices on Steam

Scarlet Hood and the Wicked Wood

A splash of Wizard of Oz, a blop of Red Riding Hood, and a dash of some southern accents

Scarlet Hood and the Wicked Wood follows, you guessed it, Scarlet who dreams to be the star she believes she was meant to be. She happens to have gathered herself one heck of a band, calling themselves Foxtrot Bop, and they got their first big gig! Not to mention that they have a chance of being signed a deal as an agent (Savannah) from Wicked Records would be there. While they did end up being late and the threat of a tornado loomed over them, they managed to arrive just in the nick of time. And good thing too! Everyone there loved them, especially Savannah. However, Savannah only wants to bring in Scarlet and have her play with some people she already gathered. Conflicted, not knowing whether she should take the deal or stay with her talented boys, Scarlet tries to tell her band, only for them to find out and react in the very way she feared. They wouldn’t even let her get any word in! Despite not letting Scarlet explain the situation or realizing that she hasn’t even signed the contract (which, you can’t blame her if she does now), they leaves her all alone on the road. Well, except that tornado.

– Real player with 14.6 hrs in game

EDITING 6/4/2021: I am going to change this to a recommendation, I have already fully completed every achievement so I can’t validate the issue was solved, but I will take the developers word for it as it was mostly my only issue with the game.

Original Review: Randomly crashes on loading screens which then makes you have to repeat your progress. Happens very often.

I do wish there was a scaling review system on steam instead of yes or no, because overall the music, art, story, and puzzles are pretty solid.

– Real player with 10.5 hrs in game

Scarlet Hood and the Wicked Wood on Steam

Unscripted

Take on your developer dream in Catalina City in Unscripted! Follow the journey of a software developer aspiring to publish their video game into the PackStore’s prestigious arcade while starting a new life in Catalina City, the city for software developers. Reconnect and meet close friends like Zen’no, new peers like Katorin, the Kotlin-loving developer, and possibly new enemies like Christina, an enigmatic Python developer.

Features

Discord rich presence integration with each chapter* (opt-in by default)
Personalized routes based on choices and story maps (four base routes)
Ambient sounds and support for emphasizing sound effects and ambience over music
Ability to switch to the Lexend font and variant to increase readability
Puzzle mini-game with advanced scripting support
Rich notifications and realistic desktop via AliceOS

Unscripted on Steam

Phantom Train

I was in a hurry home from work. It was already dark and frosty - December, after all. Since I worked in one city and lived in another, I had to travel by train. In the morning - to work, in the evening - home. The journey took a little less than an hour. Today is Friday, the mood is high.

Climbing onto a deserted platform, I began to wait for the train. There was not a soul on the platform: it was on the outskirts, next to the industrial zone, and here, as a rule, there were always few people, but today it is completely empty.

Phantom Train on Steam

当火车鸣笛三秒